Another December 2010 addition to the OED brings to mind a phrase in our lexicon describing large books as “heavy enough to stun an ox”.

dictionary attack n.

While it is perhaps a matter for regret that the quotation paragraph for this term does not catalogue incidents of physical harm meted out by wielders of dictionaries—the 20 volumes of OED2, in particular, could cause someone considerable damage—it does provide an insight into one aspect of a very 21st-century preoccupation, the security of the information held on computer systems. Here the “dictionary” in question is nothing more than a word list held electronically, and although the attack for which it is used is unlikely to cause physical harm, the virtual damage might be very high indeed: if a dictionary attack is successful and an automated program correctly matches a password, the files on a computer network or system are at the mercy of the initiator of the attack.

Hold on to your words!