For your "Christmas" reading lists...

Reading the OED : one man, one year, 21,730 pages - Ammon Shea
PE1617.O94 S54 2008

This is the book I recommended when we worked on definitions. It is laugh-out-loud funny; the author walks through his reading of the OED, week by week, and then pulls out his favorite definitions from a particular letter of the alphabet. For instance: Abluvion: (n.) Substance or things that are washed away. "Chances are you have never stared at the dirty bathwater washing down the drain and wondered, Is there a word for that? but now you will forever be cursed with the knowledge that indeed there is. also see: illutible.

Here are a few others you might want to read (over your Christmas break, perhaps?)

• The professor and the madman : a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary PE1617.O94 W56 1998
• Lost for words : the hidden history of the Oxford English dictionary PE1617.O94 M84 2005
• Caught in the web of words : James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English dictionary PE64.M8 M78

Enjoy!
Carrie