[
update:
Here
is a very rough interface, which will be improved whenever I next have some free time
]
Using the OED online costs £200/year, which is silly. Fortunately the first edition is out of copyright, and available at the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, it’s a bit tricky to find the right volume in a format that doesn’t expect you to download 200MB to look up a word. Djvu seems the best option; you need to install a browser plugin first, but then you can look at individual pages quite easily. Here are links to each volume:
A-B, C, D-E, F-G (pdf only) , H-K, L, M-N, O-P (flip-book only), Q-R, S-SH, SI-SU (flip-book only), SV-TH, TI-U, V-Z (flip-book only)
Other formats are at these links (yes, there are two separate scans, one from the University of Toronto and another from Kragen Sitaker):
- Volume 1, A-B: Sitaker
- Volume 2, C: Sitaker
- Volume 3, D-E: Toronto (partial), Complete?
- Volume 4, F-G: Sitaker, Toronto (no djvu for either)
- Volume 5, H-K: Sitaker
- Volume 6A, L:A Sitaker
- Volume 6B, M-NB (Sitaker)
- Volume 7, O-P: Toronto (flip-book only), Unlabelled (flipbook/pdf only)
- Volume 8A, Q-R: A – Sitaker
- Volume 8B, S-SHB – Sitaker
- Volume 9A, SH-SU: Sitaker.
- Volume 9B, SV-TH: Sitaker, Toronto
- Volume 10A, TI-U: Sitaker, Toronto
- Volume 10B, V-Z: Toronto, Sitaker