3. intr . 4. trans . M ILT . You can see from this that it illustrates definitions with quotations which show precisely how the meanings of words have changed over the centuries. Each entry provides a wealth of information, including history and meaning, pronunciation, etymology, definitions, variant spellings, irregular inflections, quotations, idiomatic phrases and a record of the word's use.
Some entries run to almost two columns on the page.
Thousands upon thousands of changing meanings are followed through history, illustrated by more than 83,000 quotations, from Benjamin Franklin to Lord Byron, from Jane Austen to Kazuo Ishiguro. The New Shorter OED has 500,000 definitions and 83,000 illustrative quotations. Perusing the headword group is like flipping the pages of the book version. You can also copy the CD sub-directories onto your hard disk, which means you can access the material without loading the compact disk. This improves performance, and leaves your CD drive free for other tasks.