The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but it was only in 1884 that it began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of ''A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society''. In 1895, the title ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in 10 bound volumes. In 1933, the title ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' fully replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as 12 volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the second edition was published, comprising 21,728 pages in 20 volumes. Since 2000, compilation of a third edition of the dictionary has been underway, approximately half of which was complete by 2018. The first electronic version of the dictionary was made available in 1988. The online version has been available since 2000, and by April 2014 was receiving over two million visits per month. The third edition of the dictionary is expected to be available exclusively in electronic form; the Chief Executive of Oxford University Press has stated that it is unlikely that it will ever be printed.

Historical nature

As a historical dictionary, the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' features entries in which the earliest ascertainable recorded sense of a word, whether current or obsolete, is presented first, and each additional sense is presented in historical order according to the date of its earliest ascertainable recorded use. Following each definition are several brief illustrating quotations presented in chronological order from the earliest ascertainable use of the word in that sense to the last ascertainable use for an obsolete sense, to indicate both its life span and the time since its desuetude, or to a relatively recent use for current ones. The format of the ''OED''s entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects. The forerunners to the ''OED'', such as the early volumes of the ''

Deutsches Wörterbuch The ''Deutsches Wörterbuch'' (; "The German Dictionary"), abbreviated ''DWB'', is the largest and most comprehensive dictionary of the German language in existence. According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to "key in" the 59 million words of the ''OED'' second edition, 60 years to proofread them, and 540

megabyte The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes o ...

s to store them electronically. As of 30 November 2005, the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' contained approximately 301,100 main entries. Supplementing the entry headwords, there are 157,000 bold-type combinations and derivatives; 169,000 italicized-bold phrases and combinations; 616,500 word-forms in total, including 137,000 pronunciations; 249,300

etymologies Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words and ...

; 577,000 cross-references; and 2,412,400 usage quotations. The dictionary's latest, complete print edition (second edition, 1989) was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the ''OED2'' was for the verb ''set'', which required 60,000 words to describe some 580 senses (430 for the bare verb, the rest in phrasal verbs and idioms). As entries began to be revised for the ''OED3'' in sequence starting from M, the record was progressively broken by the verbs ''make'' in 2000, then ''put'' in 2007, then ''run'' in 2011 with 645 senses. Despite its considerable size, the ''OED'' is neither the world's largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers' dictionary of the German language, begun in 1838 and completed in 1961. The first edition of the is the first great dictionary devoted to a modern European language (Italian) and was published in 1612; the first edition of dates from 1694. The official dictionary of Spanish is the (produced, edited, and published by the

Real Academia Española The Royal Spanish Academy ( es, Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with ...

), and its first edition was published in 1780. The '' Kangxi Dictionary'' of Chinese was published in 1716. The largest dictionary by number of pages is believed to be the Dutch .

History

Origins

The dictionary began as a

Philological Society The Philological Society, or London Philological Society, is the oldest learned society in Great Britain dedicated to the study of language as well as a registered Charitable organization, charity. The current Society was established in 1842 to ...

project of a small group of intellectuals in London (and unconnected to Oxford University):

Richard Chenevix Trench Richard Chenevix Trench (Richard Trench until 1873; 9 September 1807 – 28 March 1886) was an Anglican archbishop and poet. Life He was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Richard Trench (1774–1860), barrister-at-law, and the Dublin write ...

Herbert Coleridge Herbert "Herbie" Coleridge (7 October 1830 – 23 April 1861) was an English philologist, technically the first editor of what ultimately became the ''Oxford English Dictionary''. He was a grandson of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Biography ...

, and

Frederick Furnivall Frederick James Furnivall (4 February 1825 – 2 July 1910) was an English philologist, best known as one of the co-creators of the ''New English Dictionary''. He founded a number of learned societies on early English literature and made pione ...

, who were dissatisfied with the existing English dictionaries. The society expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844, but it was not until June 1857 that they began by forming an "Unregistered Words Committee" to search for words that were unlisted or poorly defined in current dictionaries. In November, Trench's report was not a list of unregistered words; instead, it was the study ''On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries'', which identified seven distinct shortcomings in contemporary dictionaries: * Incomplete coverage of obsolete words * Inconsistent coverage of families of related words * Incorrect dates for earliest use of words * History of obsolete senses of words often omitted * Inadequate distinction among

synonyms A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

* Insufficient use of good illustrative quotations * Space wasted on inappropriate or redundant content. The society ultimately realized that the number of unlisted words would be far more than the number of words in the English dictionaries of the 19th century, and shifted their idea from covering only words that were not already in English dictionaries to a larger project. Trench suggested that a new, truly ''comprehensive'' dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary. Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips. Later the same year, the society agreed to the project in principle, with the title ''A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles'' (''NED'').

Early editors

(1807–1886) played the key role in the project's first months, but his appointment as Dean of Westminster meant that he could not give the dictionary project the time that it required. He withdrew and

became the first editor. FrederickJamesFurnivall

On 12 May 1860, Coleridge's dictionary plan was published and research was started. His house was the first editorial office. He arrayed 100,000 quotation slips in a 54 pigeon-hole grid. In April 1861, the group published the first sample pages; later that month, Coleridge died of tuberculosis, aged 30. Thereupon Furnivall became editor; he was enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but temperamentally ill-suited for the work. Many volunteer readers eventually lost interest in the project, as Furnivall failed to keep them motivated. Furthermore, many of the slips were misplaced. Furnivall believed that, since many printed texts from earlier centuries were not readily available, it would be impossible for volunteers to efficiently locate the quotations that the dictionary needed. As a result, he founded the Early English Text Society in 1864 and the Chaucer Society in 1868 to publish old manuscripts. Furnivall's preparatory efforts lasted 21 years and provided numerous texts for the use and enjoyment of the general public, as well as crucial sources for lexicographers, but they did not actually involve compiling a dictionary. Furnivall recruited more than 800 volunteers to read these texts and record quotations. While enthusiastic, the volunteers were not well trained and often made inconsistent and arbitrary selections. Ultimately, Furnivall handed over nearly two tons of quotation slips and other materials to his successor. In the 1870s, Furnivall unsuccessfully attempted to recruit both Henry Sweet and

Henry Nicol Henry Nicol (1845–1880) was a philologist specialized in French phonology. Cousin of Henry Sweet, Nicol was persuaded in 1871 by Frederick James Furnivall to take over the editorship of OED The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is t ...

to succeed him. He then approached James Murray, who accepted the post of editor. In the late 1870s, Furnivall and Murray met with several publishers about publishing the dictionary. In 1878, Oxford University Press agreed with Murray to proceed with the massive project; the agreement was formalized the following year. 20 years after its conception, the dictionary project finally had a publisher. It would take another 50 years to complete.

Late in his editorship, Murray learned that one especially prolific reader, W. C. Minor, was confined to a mental hospital for (in modern terminology) schizophrenia. Minor was a Yale University-trained surgeon and a military officer in the American Civil War who had been confined to

Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire, England. It is the oldest of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England, the other two being Ashworth Hospital near Liverpool and Rampton Secu ...

after killing a man in London. He invented his own quotation-tracking system, allowing him to submit slips on specific words in response to editors' requests. The story of how Murray and Minor worked together to advance the ''OED'' was retold in the 1998 book ''

The Surgeon of Crowthorne ''The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words'' is a non-fiction history book by British writer Simon Winchester, first published in England in 1998. It was retitled ''The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murde ...

'' (US title: ''The Professor and the Madman''), which was the basis for a 2019 film, '' The Professor and the Madman'', starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn.

Oxford editors

During the 1870s, the

was concerned with the process of publishing a dictionary with such an immense scope. They had pages printed by publishers, but no publication agreement was reached; both the Cambridge University Press and the Oxford University Press were approached. The OUP finally agreed in 1879 (after two years of negotiating by Sweet, Furnivall, and Murray) to publish the dictionary and to pay Murray, who was both the editor and the

president. The dictionary was to be published as interval fascicles, with the final form in four volumes, totalling 6,400 pages. They hoped to finish the project in ten years. OED quotation slip

Murray started the project, working in a corrugated iron outbuilding called the " Scriptorium" which was lined with wooden planks, bookshelves, and 1,029 pigeon-holes for the quotation slips. He tracked and regathered Furnivall's collection of quotation slips, which were found to concentrate on rare, interesting words rather than common usages. For instance, there were ten times as many quotations for ''abusion'' as for ''abuse''. He appealed, through newspapers distributed to bookshops and libraries, for readers who would report "as many quotations as you can for ordinary words" and for words that were "rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar or used in a peculiar way". Murray had American philologist and

liberal arts college A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in liberal arts and sciences. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual capac ...

professor

Francis March Dr. Francis Andrew March (October 25, 1825 – September 9, 1911) was an American polymath, academic, philologist, and lexicographer. He is considered the principal founder of modern comparative linguistics in Old English. Also known as the "G ...

manage the collection in North America; 1,000 quotation slips arrived daily to the Scriptorium and, by 1880, there were 2,500,000. The first dictionary fascicle was published on 1 February 1884—twenty-three years after Coleridge's sample pages. The full title was ''A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society''; the 352-page volume, words from ''A'' to ''Ant'', cost 12 s 6 d (). The total sales were only 4,000 copies. The OUP saw that it would take too long to complete the work with unrevised editorial arrangements. Accordingly, new assistants were hired and two new demands were made on Murray. The first was that he move from Mill Hill to Oxford, which he did in 1885. Murray had his Scriptorium re-erected on his new property. 78 Banbury Road Oxford 20060715

Murray resisted the second demand: that if he could not meet schedule, he must hire a second, senior editor to work in parallel to him, outside his supervision, on words from elsewhere in the alphabet. Murray did not want to share the work, feeling that he would accelerate his work pace with experience. That turned out not to be so, and Philip Gell of the OUP forced the promotion of Murray's assistant

Henry Bradley Henry Bradley, FBA (3 December 1845 – 23 May 1923) was a British philologist and lexicographer who succeeded James Murray as senior editor of the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (OED). Early life Bradley had humble beginnings as a farmer's so ...

(hired by Murray in 1884), who worked independently in the British Museum in London beginning in 1888. In 1896, Bradley moved to Oxford University. Gell continued harassing Murray and Bradley with his business concerns—containing costs and speeding production—to the point where the project's collapse seemed likely. Newspapers reported the harassment, particularly the '' Saturday Review'', and public opinion backed the editors. Gell was fired, and the university reversed his cost policies. If the editors felt that the dictionary would have to grow larger, it would; it was an important work, and worth the time and money to properly finish. Neither Murray nor Bradley lived to see it. Murray died in 1915, having been responsible for words starting with ''A–D'', ''H–K'', ''O–P'', and ''T'', nearly half the finished dictionary; Bradley died in 1923, having completed ''E–G'', ''L–M'', ''S–Sh'', ''St'', and ''W–We''. By then, two additional editors had been promoted from assistant work to independent work, continuing without much trouble.

William Craigie Sir William Alexander Craigie (13 August 1867 – 2 September 1957) was a philologist and a lexicographer. A graduate of the University of St Andrews, he was the third editor of the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and co-editor (with C. T. Onion ...

started in 1901 and was responsible for ''N'', ''Q–R'', ''Si–Sq'', ''U–V'', and ''Wo–Wy.'' The OUP had previously thought London too far from Oxford but, after 1925, Craigie worked on the dictionary in Chicago, where he was a professor. The fourth editor was

Charles Talbut Onions Charles Talbut Onions (C. T. Onions) (10 September 1873 – 8 January 1965) was an English grammarian and lexicographer and the fourth editor of the ''Oxford English Dictionary''. Life Onions was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham, the eldest son o ...

, who compiled the remaining ranges starting in 1914: ''Su–Sz'', ''Wh–Wo'', and ''X–Z''. In 1919–1920, J. R. R. Tolkien was employed by the ''OED'', researching etymologies of the ''Waggle'' to ''Warlock'' range; later he parodied the principal editors as "The Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford" in the story ''

Farmer Giles of Ham ''Farmer Giles of Ham'' is a comic medieval fable written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937 and published in 1949. The story describes the encounters between Farmer Giles and a wily dragon named Chrysophylax, and how Giles manages to use these to ...

''. By early 1894, a total of 11 fascicles had been published, or about one per year: four for ''A–B'', five for ''C'', and two for ''E''. Of these, eight were 352 pages long, while the last one in each group was shorter to end at the letter break (which eventually became a volume break). At this point, it was decided to publish the work in smaller and more frequent instalments; once every three months beginning in 1895 there would be a fascicle of 64 pages, priced at 2s 6d. If enough material was ready, 128 or even 192 pages would be published together. This pace was maintained until World War I forced reductions in staff. Each time enough consecutive pages were available, the same material was also published in the original larger fascicles. Also in 1895, the title ''Oxford English Dictionary'' was first used. It then appeared only on the outer covers of the fascicles; the original title was still the official one and was used everywhere else.

Completion of first edition and first supplement

The 125th and last fascicle covered words from ''Wise'' to the end of ''W'' and was published on 19 April 1928, and the full dictionary in bound volumes followed immediately. William Shakespeare is the most-quoted writer in the completed dictionary, with '' Hamlet'' his most-quoted work. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) is the most-quoted female writer. Collectively, the Bible is the most-quoted work (in many translations); the most-quoted single work is '' Cursor Mundi''. Additional material for a given letter range continued to be gathered after the corresponding fascicle was printed, with a view towards inclusion in a supplement or revised edition. A one-volume supplement of such material was published in 1933, with entries weighted towards the start of the alphabet where the fascicles were decades old. The supplement included at least one word (''bondmaid'') accidentally omitted when its slips were misplaced; many words and senses newly coined (famously '' appendicitis'', coined in 1886 and missing from the 1885 fascicle, which came to prominence when Edward VII's 1902 appendicitis postponed his coronation); and some previously excluded as too obscure (notoriously '' radium'', omitted in 1903, months before its discoverers

Pierre Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

and Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics.). Also in 1933 the original fascicles of the entire dictionary were re-issued, bound into 12 volumes, under the title "''The Oxford English Dictionary''". This edition of 13 volumes including the supplement was subsequently reprinted in 1961 and 1970.

Second supplement

In 1933, Oxford had finally put the dictionary to rest; all work ended, and the quotation slips went into storage. However, the English language continued to change and, by the time 20 years had passed, the dictionary was outdated. There were three possible ways to update it. The cheapest would have been to leave the existing work alone and simply compile a new supplement of perhaps one or two volumes, but then anyone looking for a word or sense and unsure of its age would have to look in three different places. The most convenient choice for the user would have been for the entire dictionary to be re-edited and retypeset, with each change included in its proper alphabetical place; but this would have been the most expensive option, with perhaps 15 volumes required to be produced. The OUP chose a middle approach: combining the new material with the existing supplement to form a larger replacement supplement. Robert Burchfield was hired in 1957 to edit the second supplement;

turned 84 that year but was still able to make some contributions as well. The work on the supplement was expected to take about seven years. It actually took 29 years, by which time the new supplement ''(OEDS)'' had grown to four volumes, starting with ''A'', ''H'', ''O'', and ''Sea''. They were published in 1972, 1976, 1982, and 1986 respectively, bringing the complete dictionary to 16 volumes, or 17 counting the first supplement. Burchfield emphasized the inclusion of modern-day language and, through the supplement, the dictionary was expanded to include a wealth of new words from the burgeoning fields of science and technology, as well as popular culture and colloquial speech. Burchfield said that he broadened the scope to include developments of the language in English-speaking regions beyond the United Kingdom, including North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and the Caribbean. Burchfield also removed, for unknown reasons, many entries that had been added to the 1933 supplement. In 2012, an analysis by lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie revealed that many of these entries were in fact foreign loanwords, despite Burchfield's claim that he included more such words. The proportion was estimated from a sample calculation to amount to 17% of the foreign loan words and words from regional forms of English. Some of these had only a single recorded usage, but many had multiple recorded citations, and it ran against what was thought to be the established ''OED'' editorial practice and a perception that he had opened up the dictionary to "World English".

Revised American edition

This was published in 1968 at $300. There were changes in the arrangement of the volumes – for example volume 7 covered only N–Poy, the remaining "P" entries being transferred to volume 8.

Second edition

By the time the new supplement was completed, it was clear that the full text of the dictionary would need to be computerized. Achieving this would require retyping it once, but thereafter it would always be accessible for computer searching—as well as for whatever new editions of the dictionary might be desired, starting with an integration of the supplementary volumes and the main text. Preparation for this process began in 1983, and editorial work started the following year under the administrative direction of Timothy J. Benbow, with John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner as co-editors. In 2016, Simpson published his memoir chronicling his years at the OED: ''The Word Detective: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary – A Memoir'' (New York: Basic Books). OED-LEXX-Bungler

Thus began the ''New Oxford English Dictionary (NOED)'' project. In the United States, more than 120 typists of the International Computaprint Corporation (now

Reed Tech Reed Technology and Information Services Inc. is a company that provides electronic content management services, engaging in data capture and conversion, preservation, analysis, e-submission and publication for corporate, legal and government clie ...

) started keying in over 350,000,000 characters, their work checked by 55 proof-readers in England. Retyping the text alone was not sufficient; all the information represented by the complex typography of the original dictionary had to be retained, which was done by marking up the content in

SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates": * Declarative: Markup should des ...

. A specialized

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

and display software were also needed to access it. Under a 1985 agreement, some of this software work was done at the University of Waterloo, Canada, at the ''Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary'', led by Frank Tompa and Gaston Gonnet; this search technology went on to become the basis for the Open Text Corporation. Computer hardware, database and other software, development managers, and programmers for the project were donated by the British subsidiary of IBM; the colour syntax-directed editor for the project, LEXX, was written by

Mike Cowlishaw Mike Cowlishaw is a visiting professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is a retired IBM Fellow, and was a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technol ...

of IBM. The University of Waterloo, in Canada, volunteered to design the database.

A. Walton Litz Arthur Walton Litz, Jr. (October 31, 1929, in Nashville, Tennessee – June 4, 2014) was an American literary historian and critic who served as professor of English Literature at Princeton University from 1956 to 1993. He was the author or ed ...

, an English professor at Princeton University who served on the Oxford University Press advisory council, was quoted in ''Time'' as saying "I've never been associated with a project, I've never even heard of a project, that was so incredibly complicated and that met every deadline." By 1989, the ''NOED'' project had achieved its primary goals, and the editors, working online, had successfully combined the original text, Burchfield's supplement, and a small amount of newer material, into a single unified dictionary. The word "new" was again dropped from the name, and the second edition of the ''OED,'' or the ''OED2,'' was published. The first edition retronymically became the ''OED1''. The ''Oxford English Dictionary 2'' was printed in 20 volumes. Up to a very late stage, all the volumes of the first edition were started on letter boundaries. For the second edition, there was no attempt to start them on letter boundaries, and they were made roughly equal in size. The 20 volumes started with ''A'', ''B.B.C.'', ''Cham'', ''Creel'', ''Dvandva'', ''Follow'', ''Hat'', ''Interval'', ''Look'', ''Moul'', ''Ow'', ''Poise'', ''Quemadero'', ''Rob'', ''Ser'', ''Soot'', ''Su'', ''Thru'', ''Unemancipated'', and ''Wave''. The content of the ''OED2'' is mostly just a reorganization of the earlier corpus, but the retypesetting provided an opportunity for two long-needed format changes. The headword of each entry was no longer capitalized, allowing the user to readily see those words that actually require a capital letter. Murray had devised his own notation for pronunciation, there being no standard available at the time, whereas the ''OED2'' adopted the modern

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...

. Unlike the earlier edition, all foreign alphabets except Greek were transliterated. The British quiz show ''

Countdown A countdown is a sequence of backward counting to indicate the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur. NASA commonly employs the terms "L-minus" and "T-minus" during the preparation for and anticipation of a rocket launch, and eve ...

'' awarded the leather-bound complete version to the champions of each series between its inception in 1982 and Series 63 in 2010. The prize was axed after Series 83, completed in June 2021, due to being considered out of date. When the print version of the second edition was published in 1989, the response was enthusiastic. Author Anthony Burgess declared it "the greatest publishing event of the century", as quoted by the '' Los Angeles Times''. ''Time'' dubbed the book "a scholarly Everest", and

Richard Boston Richard Boston (29 December 1938 – 22 December 2006) was an English journalist and author, a rigorous dissenter and a belligerent pacifist. An anarchist, toper, raconteur, marathon runner and practical joker, he described his pastimes as "so ...

, writing for '' The Guardian'', called it "one of the wonders of the world".

Additions series

The supplements and their integration into the second edition were a great improvement to the ''OED'' as a whole, but it was recognized that most of the entries were still fundamentally unaltered from the first edition. Much of the information in the dictionary published in 1989 was already decades out of date, though the supplements had made good progress towards incorporating new vocabulary. Yet many definitions contained disproven scientific theories, outdated historical information, and moral values that were no longer widely accepted. Furthermore, the supplements had failed to recognize many words in the existing volumes as obsolete by the time of the second edition's publication, meaning that thousands of words were marked as current despite no recent evidence of their use. Accordingly, it was recognized that work on a third edition would have to begin to rectify these problems. The first attempt to produce a new edition came with the ''Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series,'' a new set of supplements to complement the ''OED2'' with the intention of producing a third edition from them. The previous supplements appeared in alphabetical instalments, whereas the new series had a full A–Z range of entries within each individual volume, with a complete alphabetical index at the end of all words revised so far, each listed with the volume number which contained the revised entry. However, in the end only three ''Additions'' volumes were published this way, two in 1993 and one in 1997, each containing about 3,000 new definitions. The possibilities of the World Wide Web and new computer technology in general meant that the processes of researching the dictionary and of publishing new and revised entries could be vastly improved. New text search databases offered vastly more material for the editors of the dictionary to work with, and with publication on the Web as a possibility, the editors could publish revised entries much more quickly and easily than ever before. A new approach was called for, and for this reason it was decided to embark on a new, complete revision of the dictionary. * ''Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series'' Volume 1 (): Includes over 20,000 illustrative quotations showing the evolution of each word or meaning. :*?th impression (1994-02-10) * ''Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series'' Volume 2 () :*?th impression (1994-02-10) * ''Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series'' Volume 3 (): Contains 3,000 new words and meanings from around the English-speaking world. Published by Clarendon Press. :*?th impression (1997-10-09)

Third edition

Beginning with the launch of the first ''OED Online'' site in 2000, the editors of the dictionary began a major revision project to create a completely revised third edition of the dictionary (''OED3''), expected to be completed in 2037 at a projected cost of about £34 million. Revisions were started at the letter ''M'', with new material appearing every three months on the ''OED Online'' website. The editors chose to start the revision project from the middle of the dictionary in order that the overall quality of entries be made more even, since the later entries in the ''OED1'' generally tended to be better than the earlier ones. However, in March 2008, the editors announced that they would alternate each quarter between moving forward in the alphabet as before and updating "key English words from across the alphabet, along with the other words which make up the alphabetical cluster surrounding them". With the relaunch of the ''OED Online'' website in December 2010, alphabetical revision was abandoned altogether. The revision is expected roughly to double the dictionary in size. Apart from general updates to include information on new words and other changes in the language, the third edition brings many other improvements, including changes in formatting and stylistic conventions for easier reading and computerized searching, more etymological information, and a general change of focus away from individual words towards more general coverage of the language as a whole. While the original text drew its quotations mainly from literary sources such as novels, plays, and poetry, with additional material from newspapers and academic journals, the new edition will reference more kinds of material that were unavailable to the editors of previous editions, such as wills, inventories, account books, diaries, journals, and letters. John Simpson was the first chief editor of the ''OED3''. He retired in 2013 and was replaced by

Michael Proffitt Michael Proffitt is the eighth chief editor for the Oxford English Dictionary. Brought up in Edinburgh, Proffitt attended the University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment ...

, who is the eighth chief editor of the dictionary. The production of the new edition exploits computer technology, particularly since the inauguration in June 2005 of the "Perfect All-Singing All-Dancing

Editorial An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK) is an article written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper, magazine, or any other written document, often unsigned. Australian and major United States newspapers, suc ...

and Notation

Application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

", or "Pasadena". With this XML-based system, lexicographers can spend less effort on presentation issues such as the numbering of definitions. This system has also simplified the use of the quotations database, and enabled staff in New York to work directly on the dictionary in the same way as their Oxford-based counterparts. Other important computer uses include internet searches for evidence of current usage and email submissions of quotations by readers and the general public.

New entries and words

'' Wordhunt'' was a 2005 appeal to the general public for help in providing citations for 50 selected recent words, and produced

antedating Antedating may refer to: * Antedating (lexicography), finding attested use of a word or phrase earlier than the previous earliest known use * Antedated contract, takes effect earlier than its signing date * Antedated cheque, dated earlier than its ...

s for many. The results were reported in a BBC TV series, '' Balderdash and Piffle''. The ''OED''s readers contribute quotations: the department currently receives about 200,000 a year. ''OED'' currently contains over 600,000 entries. They update the OED on a quarterly basis to make up for its Third Edition revising their existing entries and adding new words and senses.

Formats

Compact editions

In 1971, the 13-volume ''OED1'' (1933) was reprinted as a two-volume ''Compact Edition'', by photographically reducing each page to one-half its linear dimensions; each compact edition page held four ''OED1'' pages in a four-up ("4-up") format. The two-volume letters were ''A'' and ''P''; the first supplement was at the second volume's end. The ''Compact Edition'' included, in a small slip-case drawer, a Bausch & Lomb

magnifying glass A magnifying glass is a convex lens that is used to produce a magnified image of an object. The lens is usually mounted in a frame with a handle. A magnifying glass can be used to focus light, such as to concentrate the sun's radiation to crea ...

to help in reading reduced type. Many copies were inexpensively distributed through book clubs. In 1987, the second supplement was published as a third volume to the ''Compact Edition''. In 1991, for the 20-volume ''OED2'' (1989), the compact edition format was re-sized to one-third of original linear dimensions, a nine-up ("9-up") format requiring greater magnification, but allowing publication of a single-volume dictionary. It was accompanied by a magnifying glass as before and ''A User's Guide to the "Oxford English Dictionary"'', by Donna Lee Berg. After these volumes were published, though, book club offers commonly continued to sell the two-volume 1971 ''Compact Edition''. * The ''Compact Oxford English Dictionary'' (second edition, 1991, ): Includes definitions of 500,000 words, 290,000 main entries, 137,000 pronunciations, 249,300 etymologies, 577,000 cross-references, over 2,412,000 illustrative quotations, and is again accompanied by a magnifying glass. :*?th impression (1991-12-05) File:Compact OED.jpg, The ''Compact Oxford English Dictionary'' (second edition, 1991). File:Compact OED entry.jpg, Part of an entry in the 1991 compact edition, with a centimetre scale showing the very small type sizes used.

Electronic versions

Once the dictionary was digitized and online, it was also available to be published on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

. The text of the first edition was made available in 1987. Afterward, three versions of the second edition were issued. Version 1 (1992) was identical in content to the printed second edition, and the CD itself was not copy-protected. Version 2 (1999) included the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' ''Additions'' of 1993 and 1997. Version 3.0 was released in 2002 with additional words from the ''OED3'' and software improvements. Version 3.1.1 (2007) added support for hard disk installation, so that the user does not have to insert the CD to use the dictionary. It has been reported that this version will work on operating systems other than

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, using emulation programs. Version 4.0 of the CD has been available since June 2009 and works with Windows 7 and Mac OS X (10.4 or later). This version uses the CD drive for installation, running only from the hard drive. On 14 March 2000, the ''Oxford English Dictionary Online'' (''OED Online'') became available to subscribers. The online database containing the ''OED2'' is updated quarterly with revisions that will be included in the ''OED3'' (see above). The online edition is the most up-to-date version of the dictionary available. The ''OED'' website is not optimized for mobile devices, but the developers have stated that there are plans to provide an API to facilitate the development of interfaces for querying the ''OED''. The price for an individual to use this edition is £195 or US$295 a year, even after a reduction in 2004; consequently, most subscribers are large organizations such as universities. Some public libraries and companies have also subscribed, including public libraries in the United Kingdom, where access is funded by the Arts Council, and public libraries in New Zealand. Individuals who belong to a library which subscribes to the service are able to use the service from their own home without charge. * ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second edition on CD-ROM Version 3.1: :*Upgrade version for 3.0 (): ::*?th impression (2005-08-18) * ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second edition on CD-ROM Version 4.0: Includes 500,000 words with 2.5 million source quotations, 7,000 new words and meanings. Includes Vocabulary from OED 2nd Edition and all 3 Additions volumes. Supports Windows 2000-7 and Mac OS X 10.4–10.5). Flash-based dictionary. :*Full version (/) ::*?th impression (2009-06-04) :*Upgrade version for 2.0 and above (/): Supports Windows only. ::*?th impression (2009-07-15) :*Print+CD-ROM version (): Supports Windows Vista and Mac OS). ::*?th impression (2009-11-16)

Relationship to other Oxford dictionaries

The ''OED''s utility and renown as a historical dictionary have led to numerous offspring projects and other dictionaries bearing the Oxford name, though not all are directly related to the ''OED'' itself. The '' Shorter Oxford English Dictionary,'' originally started in 1902 and completed in 1933, is an abridgement of the full work that retains the historical focus, but does not include any words which were obsolete before 1700 except those used by Shakespeare,

Milton Milton may refer to: Names * Milton (surname), a surname (and list of people with that surname) ** John Milton (1608–1674), English poet * Milton (given name) ** Milton Friedman (1912–2006), Nobel laureate in Economics, author of '' Free t ...

, Spenser, and the

King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...

. A completely new edition was produced from the ''OED2'' and published in 1993, with revisions in 2002 and 2007. The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' is a different work, which aims to cover current English only, without the historical focus. The original edition, mostly based on the ''OED1'', was edited by Francis George Fowler and Henry Watson Fowler and published in 1911, before the main work was completed. Revised editions appeared throughout the twentieth century to keep it up to date with changes in English usage. ''The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English'' was originally conceived by F. G. Fowler and H. W. Fowler to be compressed, compact, and concise. Its primary source is the Oxford English Dictionary, and it is nominally an abridgement of the Concise Oxford Dictionary. It was first published in 1924. In 1998 the '' New Oxford Dictionary of English'' (''NODE'') was published. While also aiming to cover current English, ''NODE'' was not based on the ''OED''. Instead, it was an entirely new dictionary produced with the aid of

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is the study of language, study of a language as that language is expressed in its text corpus (plural ''corpora''), its body of "real world" text. Corpus linguistics proposes that a reliable analysis of a language is more feas ...

. Once ''NODE'' was published, a similarly brand-new edition of the ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' followed, this time based on an abridgement of ''NODE'' rather than the ''OED''; ''NODE'' (under the new title of the ''Oxford Dictionary of English'', or ''ODE'') continues to be principal source for Oxford's product line of current-English dictionaries, including the '' New Oxford American Dictionary'', with the ''OED'' now only serving as the basis for scholarly historical dictionaries.

Spelling

The ''OED'' lists British headword spellings (e.g., ''labour'', ''centre'') with variants following (''labor'', ''center'', etc.). For the suffix more commonly spelt ''-ise'' in British English, OUP policy dictates a preference for the spelling ''-ize'', e.g., ''realize'' vs. ''realise'' and ''globalization'' vs. ''globalisation''. The rationale is etymological, in that the English suffix is mainly derived from the Greek suffix ''-ιζειν'', (''-izein''), or the Latin ''-izāre''. However, ''-ze'' is also sometimes treated as an Americanism insofar as the ''-ze'' suffix has crept into words where it did not originally belong, as with ''analyse'' (British English), which is spelt ''analyze'' in American English.

Reception and criticism

British prime minister

Stanley Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a British Conservative Party politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as prime minister on three occasions, ...

described the ''OED'' as a "national treasure". Author

Anu Garg Anu Garg (born April 5, 1967) is an American author and speaker. He is also the founder of Wordsmith.org, an online community comprising word lovers from an estimated 195 countries. His books explore the joy of words. He has authored several book ...

, founder of Wordsmith.org, has called it a "lex icon". Tim Bray, co-creator of Extensible Markup Language ( XML), credits the ''OED'' as the developing inspiration of that

markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

. However, despite its claims of authority, the dictionary has been criticized since the 1960s because of its scope, its claims to authority, its British-centredness and relative neglect of World Englishes, its implied but unacknowledged focus on literary language and, above all, its influence. The ''OED'', as a commercial product, has always had to steer a line between scholarship and marketing. In his review of the 1982 supplement, University of Oxford linguist Roy Harris writes that criticizing the ''OED'' is extremely difficult because "one is dealing not just with a dictionary but with a national institution", one that "has become, like the English monarchy, virtually immune from criticism in principle". He further notes that neologisms from respected "literary" authors such as

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

and Virginia Woolf are included, whereas usage of words in newspapers or other less "respectable" sources holds less sway, even though they may be commonly used. He writes that the ''OED''s " ack-and-white lexicography is also black-and-white in that it takes upon itself to pronounce authoritatively on the rights and wrongs of usage", faulting the dictionary's prescriptive rather than

descriptive In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community. François & Ponsonnet (2013). All acad ...

usage. To Harris, this prescriptive classification of certain usages as "erroneous" and the complete omission of various forms and usages cumulatively represent the "social bias s of the (presumably well-educated and wealthy) compilers. However, the identification of "erroneous and catachrestic" usages is being removed from third edition entries, sometimes in favour of usage notes describing the attitudes to language which have previously led to these classifications. Another avenue of criticism is the dictionary's non-inclusion of

for words of

AAVE African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...

or African language origin such as '' jazz'', ''

dig Digging, also referred to as excavation, is the process of using some implement such as claws, hands, manual tools or heavy equipment, to remove material from a solid surface, usually soil, sand or rock (geology), rock on the surface of Earth. Di ...

'' or ''wikt:badmouth, badmouth'' (the latter two are possibly of Wolof language, Wolof and Mandinka language, Mandinka languages, respectively). As of 2022, OUP is preparing a specialized ''Oxford Dictionary of African American English'' in collaboration with Harvard University's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, with literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. being the project's editor-in-chief. Harris also faults the editors' "donnish conservatism" and their adherence to prudish Victorian morals, citing as an example the non-inclusion of "various centuries-old 'four-letter words until 1972. However, no English dictionary included such words, for fear of possible prosecution under British obscenity laws, until after the conclusion of the R v Penguin Books Ltd., ''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' obscenity trial in 1960. The ''Penguin English Dictionary'' of 1965 was the first dictionary that included the word ''fuck''. Joseph Wright (linguist), Joseph Wright's ''English Dialect Dictionary'' had included ''shit'' in 1905. The ''OED''s claims of authority have also been questioned by linguists such as Pius ten Hacken, who notes that the dictionary actively strives toward definitiveness and authority but can only achieve those goals in a limited sense, given the difficulties of defining the scope of what it includes. Founding editor James Murray was also reluctant to include scientific terms, despite their documentation, unless he felt that they were widely enough used. In 1902, he declined to add the word "radium" to the dictionary.Gross, John, ''The Oxford Book of Parodies'', Oxford University Press, 2010, pg. 319

References

External links

* *
Archive of documents
including *** Richard Chenevix Trench, Trench's origina
"On some deficiencies in our English Dictionaries"
paper *** James Murray (lexicographer), Murray's origina
appeal for readers
** Thei
page of ''OED'' statistics
an
another such page
** Two from the OED. * Oxford University Press pages
Second EditionAdditions Series Volume 1Additions Series Volume 2Additions Series Volume 3''The Compact Oxford English Dictionary'' New Edition20-volume printed set+CD-ROMCD 3.1 upgradeCD 4.0 fullCD 4.0 upgrade

1st edition

; Internet Archive :''1888–1933 Issue'' :Full title of each volume: ''A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society'' :: :''1933 Corrected re-issue'' :Full title of each volume: ''The Oxford English Dictionary: Being a Corrected Re-issue with an Introduction, Supplement and Bibliography, of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society'' :: ; HathiTrust * Some volumes (only available from within the USA): *
University of Virginia copy
*
Princeton University copy
*
University of Michigan copy
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