OED may soon only be available online

It seems only somewhat surprising that this is likely. Anyone who cares about the use of words has long since moved to the swift and easy methods of finding definitions online. The numbers tell the story: 2 million hits a month from subscribers, while the current printed 20-volume edition has sold about 30,000 sets in total. The unwritten part of the story linked here is how free online dictionaries have undercut the no doubt more authoritive ones like OED. For those who care to know, the OED was the product of British intellectuals who in 1857 formed what was known as the Unregistered Words Association. It ultimately produced a scholarly paper on what was wrong with dictionaries of the day.