Unlike you, I actually own a full set of the Oxford English Dictionary. A dozen massive volumes — each a foot tall and weighing about eight pounds. A linear yard of navy blue spines — “Oxford blue,” aptly enough — if you include the four supplements, stretched out across the upper shelf of the roll top desk behind me. Spin around in my chair and I can yank one down, and sometimes do.
Why go to the trouble? When a few clicks will bring up any meaning without the risk of handling one of these big boys — really, drop it on your foot, you could break a toe.
My set was published in 1978, making it nearly a half century out of date. The meaning of “computer” is given as, “One who computes; a calculator, reckoner; spec. a person employed to make calculations in an observatory, in surveying, etc.” That’s it. A brief, old definition — the way the word is defined in Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary.
Plug “computer def” into a search engine and you get: “an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.” Much more current.
But not in-depth. If you find that explanation, like so much online, thin gruel, navigating a lake a thousand miles wide and an inch deep, you can also subscribe to the OED for $10 a month, $100 a year, then plunge into the etymologies and stay up on the blizzard of changes to a language that is mutable and plastic (“5. Susceptible of being moulded or shaped.”) Why be behind the times?
Well, for starters, have you had a close look at the times we’re in? In a lunge for publicity, the folks who publish the OED designate a “word of the year.” On Monday they announced 2025’s term: “rage bait” defined as, “(n.) Online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account.”
Rage bait won out, by public vote, over two shortlist contenders: “aura farming,” (“The cultivation of an impressive, attractive, or charismatic persona or public image by behaving or presenting oneself in a way intended subtly to convey an air of confidence, coolness, or mystique”) and “biohack” — (“to attempt to improve or optimize one’s physical or mental performance, health, longevity or wellbeing by altering one’s diet, exercise routine or lifestyle by using other means, such as drugs, supplements or technological devices.”)
I’d never heard of any of them — of course not. I’m marooned on one of the increasingly scattered and windswept islands of professional daily journalism, my signal fire guttering, subsisting on coconut milk and grilled voles, watching the water rise up the beach. Though I’m told that kids in their 20s toss “rage bait” out regularly. Last year’s word was certainly on point: “brain rot,” which is “low quality, low value content found on social media and the internet” and what lapping that up three hours out of 24 — the average chunk of life blown every day on social media by Gen Z types — does to a person.
The word in the OED definition of “rage bait” that sticks out, for me, is “deliberately.” As much as my column seems to invoke the ire of people untroubled by the rule of law being rendered meaningless, that isn’t my intention. A writer is allowed to direct himself toward a particular audience — my intended readers are those alarmed by our current situation and hoping remedy arrives before we become a satellite of Russia, assuming we aren’t already. Those who disagree and write in, if not enraged, then highly irked, are like someone who crashes the wedding dinner of people he doesn’t know, then complains about the food.
It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to persuade folks of the wrongness of their path. But it isn’t possible. If you still think that Donald Trump is the cat’s pajamas (1920s slang for something excellent), what am I supposed to do? Facts and reason didn’t get you here; facts and reason won’t lead you back.
If you want your own physical set of the Oxford English Dictionary, you still can order one from their website for $1,215, updated as recently as 1989. Now that I think of it, I don’t actually “own” this OED, in the sense that it belongs to me. Technically, it belongs to the paper. During an office move, years ago, when they were offloading the library books into a windowless basement room that nobody knew the location of or had keys to, I transferred the volumes to the Sun-Times Northbrook bureau. The newsroom can have them back anytime they want.