The Oxford English Dictionary: 20 Volume Set (Hardcover)

Originally published in fascicles starting in 1884 and completed in 1928, subsequently revised, expanded to 20 volumes, and adapted to the electronic age, the "OED has become the most venerated English language reference ever compiled. For those who use and love the language most intensely, the "OED has no peer. With more than 22,000 pages of definitions, nearly 2.5 illustrative quotations from writers as disparate as Geoffrey Chaucer and Erica Jong, William Shakespeare and Raymond Chandler, Charles Darwin and Quentin Tarantino, the OED is a dictionary like no other. Its entries offer the most authoritative definitions, detailed information on pronunciation, variant spellings throughout each word's history, extensive treatment of etymology, and details of area of usage and of any regional characteristics (including geographical origins). It is, as "Time observed, "a scholarly Everest."