History of the OED | Oxford English Dictionary Home History of the OED History of the OED The Oxford English Dictionary has been the last word on words for over a century. But, as with a respected professor or admired parent, we count on its wisdom and authority without thinking much about how it was acquired. What is the history of the Oxford English Dictionary? Exploring its origins and development will give new insight into this extraordinary, living document.

Toggle Content navigation How it began 1857: The Philological Society of London calls for a new English Dictionary More work than they thought 1884: Five years into a proposed ten-year project, the editors reach ant Keeping it current 1933-1986: Supplements to the OED Making it modern 1980s: The Supplements are integrated with the OED to produce its Second Edition Into the electronic age 1992: The first CD-ROM version of the OED is published The future has begun The present: The OED is now being fully revised, with new material published in parts online How it began When the members of the Philological Society of London decided, in 1857, that existing English language dictionaries were incomplete and deficient, and called for a complete re-examination of the language from Anglo-Saxon times onward, they knew they were embarking on an ambitious project. However, even they didn’t realize the full extent of the work they initiated, or how long it would take to achieve the final result. The project proceeded slowly after the Society’s first grand statement of purpose.

Eventually, in 1879, the Society made an agreement with the Oxford University Press and James A. H. Murray to begin work on a New English Dictionary (as the Oxford English Dictionary was then known). More work than they thought Existing English dictionaries were incomplete and deficient The new dictionary was planned as a four-volume, 6,400-page work that would include all English language vocabulary from the Early Middle English period (1150 AD) onward, plus some earlier words if they had continued to be used into Middle English. It was estimated that the project would be finished in approximately ten years. Five years down the road, when Murray and his colleagues had only reached as far as the word ‘ant’, they realized it was time to reconsider their schedule. It was not surprising that the project was taking longer than anticipated. Not only are the complexities of the English language formidable, but it also never stops evolving. Murray and his Dictionary colleagues had to keep track of new words and new meanings of existing words at the same time that they were trying to examine the previous seven centuries of the language’s development.

The English language never stops evolving Murray and his team did manage to publish the first part (or ‘fascicle’, to use the technical term) in 1884, but it was clear by this point that a much more comprehensive work was required than had been imagined by the Philological Society almost thirty years earlier. One step at a time Over the next four decades work on the Dictionary continued and new editors joined the project. Murray now had a large team directed by himself, Henry Bradley, W.A. Craigie, and C.T. Onions . These men worked steadily, producing fascicle after fascicle until finally, in April, 1928, the last volume was published. Instead of 6,400 pages in four volumes, the Dictionary published under the imposing name A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles – contained over 400,000 words and phrases in ten volumes. Sadly, Murray did not live to see the completion of his great work; he died in 1915. The work to which he had devoted his life represented an achievement unprecedented in the history of publishing anywhere in the world. The Dictionary had taken its place as the ultimate authority on the language.

Keeping it current An exhilarating aspect of a living language is that it continually changes. This means that no dictionary is ever really finished. After fifty years of work on the first edition, the editors must have found this fact exhausting to contemplate. Nevertheless, as soon as the original ten volumes of the New English Dictionary were completed, Craigie and Onions, the two editors still involved with the project, began updating it. In 1933, a single-volume Supplement to the Dictionary was published. Also at this time the original Dictionary was reprinted in twelve volumes and the work was formally given its current title, the Oxford English Dictionary. Modern English was continuously monitored by the celebrated ‘reading programme’ The twelve-volume Oxford English Dictionary and the single-volume Supplement represented the final statement from Oxford for many years to come. However, in 1957, Robert Burchfield was appointed Editor for a new Supplement that would replace the 1933 volume and include much new information on the language (especially on twentieth century vocabulary) obtained in the intervening years.

Modern English was continuously monitored by the Dictionary’s celebrated ‘reading programme’, more scientific and technical terms were added, and the scope of the Dictionary was broadened to include considerably more words from North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean. Substantially longer than the 1933 edition, this new Supplement was published in four volumes between 1972 and 1986. Making it modern In 1982, as Burchfield’s work on the Supplement came within sight of the completion, Oxford University Press debated how to bring this monumental dictionary into the modern age. It soon became clear that the traditional methods of compiling entries would have to be updated, and that the source material should be transferred from paper to an electronic medium. The enterprise must change to deploy project managers and systems engineers as well as lexicographers. The Press duly set about this with the formation of the New Oxford English Dictionary Project in 1984. The team was given the objective of publishing an integrated print edition in 1989 and also of providing a full, electronic text to form the basis of future revision and extension of the Dictionary.

The most adventurous computerization project seen in the publishing industry How do you take a multi-volume, century-old, print-based reference work and turn it into a machine-readable resource? By spending $13.5 million over five years in the most adventurous computerization project seen in the publishing industry at that time. Bespoke computer systems were built for both pre-processing the text and editing it in electronic form; text was marked up in the (then) novel SGML encoding scheme; the pages of the old edition and the Supplement were typed again by 120 keyboarders; and more than 50 proofreaders checked the results of their work. In Oxford John Simpson and Edmund Weiner with a core group of lexicographers reviewed, corrected, and edited this new electronic dictionary, as well as adding 5,000 new words and senses to 400,000 definitions previously expressed in 60,000,000 words. In all, the Project team succeeded in accomplishing around 85 per cent of its work by software, but the remaining 15 per cent required the critical eye of the editors.

The culmination of this mammoth task was the setting in type and subsequent printing of the Oxford English Dictionary , Second Edition. In 1989 this was published on time, to great acclaim. The finished work, edited by Simpson and Weiner, fills 22,000 pages which are bound in twenty substantial volumes. Into the electronic age In 1992 the Oxford English Dictionary again made history when a CD-ROM edition of the work was published. Suddenly a massive, twenty-volume work that takes up four feet of shelf space and weighs 150 pounds is reduced to a slim, shiny disk that takes up virtually no space and weighs just a few ounces. The Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM has been a great success. The electronic format has revolutionized the way people use the Dictionary to search and retrieve information. Complex investigations into word origins or quotations that would have been impossible to conduct using the print edition now take only a few seconds. Because the electronic format makes the Oxford English Dictionary so easy to use, its audience now embraces all kinds of interested readers beyond the confines of the scholarly community. The future has begun Today, once again, the Oxford English Dictionary is under alteration.

Continuing the technological innovations, the Dictionary is now available as an online publication designed to take full advantage of this powerful and accessible medium. The content of the Dictionary is also being comprehensively revised. However, instead of adding new material in supplements to the main edition, or simply interspersing new information throughout the body of the old edition, the entire work is being updated. This is the first time material written by Murray and the early editors has been changed since they finished in 1928. The result of this ambitious undertaking will be a completely revitalized Oxford English Dictionary. At no period in its history has the Oxford English Dictionary been profitable commercially for Oxford University Press. However, the Press remains committed to sustaining research into the origins and development of the English language wherever it is spoken. This commitment to the cultural values embodied in the Dictionary is shown by the £34 million (US$55 million) funding of the current revision programme and the associated programme for new words. The remedial work of revising original 19th and early 20th century editorial material is in progress, and the results of the revision programme and additions of new words will be published online every three months.

The ambitious goals which the Philological Society set out in 1857 seem modest in comparison with the phenomenal achievement which their initiative set in motion. The Oxford English Dictionary is a living document that has been growing and changing for 140 years. Far more than a convenient place to look up words and their origins, the Oxford English Dictionary is an irreplaceable part of English culture. It not only provides an important record of the evolution of our language, but also documents the continuing development of our society. It is certain to continue in this role as we enter the new century. The Oxford English Dictionary (20 Volume Set) / Edition 2 by John Simpson | 9780198611868 | Hardcover | Barnes & Noble® Related Subjects Overview Eighty years ago, the "greatest work in dictionary-making ever undertaken" was completed. And with its enormous range, unparalleled historical depth, detailed etymologies, and inexhaustible supply of illustrative quotations, it has enriched the lives of writers, readers, and word-lovers of all stripes ever since.

Begun in 1857, published in ten volumes in 1928, subsequently revised and expanded to 20 volumes in 1989, and now adopted to the electronic age, the OED has become the most venerated and most beloved English-language reference ever compiled. The key feature of the OED, of course, is its unique historical focus. Accompanying each definition is a chronologically arranged group of quotations that illustrate the evolution of meaning from the word's first recorded usage and show the contexts in which it can be used. The quotations are drawn from a huge variety of sources--literary, scholarly, technical, popular-and represent authors as disparate as Geoffrey Chaucer and Erica Jong, William Shakespeare and Raymond Chandler, Charles Darwin and John Le Carre. In all, nearly 2.5 million quotations--illustrating over a half-million words--can be found in the OED. Other features distinguishing the entries in the dictionary are the most authoritative definitions, detailed information on pronunciation, variant spellings throughout each word's history, extensive treatment of etymology, and details of area of usage and of any regional characteristics (including geographical origins).

A dictionary like no other in the world, the OED has been described as "among the wonders of the world of scholarship." Reflecting upon the Dictionary's 80 years, that statement is today more apt than it ever has been. Also available online at: Advertising Bonhams : OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. MURRAY, JAMES A.H. 1837-1915, et al. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884-1933. Lot Details OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. MURRAY, JAMES A.H. 1837-1915, et al. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884-1933. 10 volumes in original 132 parts plus Supplement Volume (plus a handful of duplicate parts). Folio. Triple column. Original printed wrappers or cloth-backed wrappers; about half with printed dust jackets. Housed in 20 archival board cases. Occasional chipping or freckling to wrappers, about 10 wrappers lacking. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL PARTS.

The making of the OED began well before the publication of its first fascicle in 1884. The project was initiated by the formal Proposal for the Publication of a New English Dictionary by the Philological Society of 1859, which stated "The first requirement of every lexicon is, that it should contain every word occurring in the literature of the language it professes to illustrate." Attempts by the Society to realize this vision over the next two decades foundered. However, the project was reinvigorated in 1879 with the backing of the Oxford University Press and under the new and eccentric editorship of James A.H. Murray. That year, Murray issued an Appeal to the English-Speaking and English-Reading Public to Read Books and Make Extracts for the Philological Society's New Dictionary, distributing copies among British and American professors, lecturers, personal friends, and members of the Society. Taking advantage of favorable notice in the popular press, Murray encouraged non-academic readers as well to contribute slips documenting the usage and contexts of words they encountered in their reading.

Enthusiasm spread quickly, and by the end of 1880, Murray had attracted 754 readers who submitted a combined 361,670 slips for the dictionary. (See Mugglestone Lost for Words pp 8-17.) The project would grow to immense proportions: originally projected as a four volume work to be published in ten years' time, the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was ultimately published in 125 separate parts comprising 10 volumes, requiring 44 years for its completion. In its four-plus decades the dictionary acquired the additional editorship of Henry Bradley, William Craigie, and Charles Onions. "While A New English Dictionary continued to appear on the title pages of the various parts and sections of the first edition 1884-1928, its designation as the Oxford English Dictionary was established from 1895 on the covers and the wrappers of the individual parts. It was not, however, until the 1933 edition ... that Oxford English Dictionary also appeared on the title page" (Mugglestone p 223). Activities Go to Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs Auction information This auction is now finished.

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3 The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language . [2] Two fully-bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. As of December 2008, the editors had completed one quarter of a third edition. [3] Contents 9 External links Entries and relative size According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to type the 59 million words of the OED second edition, 60 years to proofread it, and 540 megabytes to store it electronically. [4] 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 ; 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 430 senses. As entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000, then put in 2007. [5] Despite its impressive size, the OED is neither the world's largest nor earliest dictionary.

The Dutch dictionary Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal , which has similar aims to the OED, is the largest and it took twice as long to complete. The earliest large dictionary is the Grimm brothers ' dictionary of the German language , begun in 1838 and completed in 1961. The first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca , which is the first great dictionary devoted to a modern European language ( Italian ), was published in 1612; the first edition of Dictionnaire de l'Académie française dates from 1694. The first edition of the official dictionary of Spanish, the Diccionario de la lengua española (produced, edited, and published by the Real Academia Española ) was published in 1780. The Kangxi dictionary of Chinese was published even earlier, in 1716. The OED's official policy is to attempt to record a word's most-known usages and variants in all varieties of English past and present, worldwide.

Per the 1933 "Preface": The aim of this Dictionary is to present in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records [ca. AD740] down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang. It continues: Hence we exclude all words that had become obsolete by 1150 [the end of the Old English era] ... Dialectal words and forms which occur since 1500 are not admitted, except when they continue the history of the word or sense once in general use, illustrate the history of a word, or have themselves a certain literary currency. The OED is the focus of much scholarly work about English words.

Its headword variant spellings order list influences written English in English-speaking countries.[citation needed] History Advertisements Origins At first, the dictionary was unconnected to Oxford University but was the idea of a small group of intellectuals in London; [6] it originally was a Philological Society project conceived in London by Richard Chenevix Trench , Herbert Coleridge , and Frederick Furnivall , who were dissatisfied with the current English dictionaries. In June 1857, they formed an "Unregistered Words Committee" to search for unlisted and undefined words lacking 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 Insufficient use of good illustrative quotations Space wasted on inappropriate or redundant content. The Philological Society, however, 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.

The Society eventually shifted their idea from only words that were not already in English dictionaries to a more comprehensive project. Trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On January 7, 1858, the Society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary. [7] Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips. In 1858, the Society agreed to the project in principle, with the title "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" (NED). Early editors Richard Chenevix Trench played the key role in the project's first months, but his ecclesiastical career meant that he could not give the dictionary project the time required, easily ten years[citation needed]; he withdrew, and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor. Frederick Furnivall , 1825-1910 On 12 May 1860, Coleridge's dictionary plan was published, and research 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, the thirty-one-year old Coleridge died of tuberculosis . Furnivall then became editor; he was enthusiastic and knowledgeable, yet temperamentally ill-suited for the work. [8] Many volunteer readers eventually lost interest in the project as Furnivall failed to keep them motivated. Furthermore, many of the slips had been misplaced. Recruited assistants handled two tons of quotation slips and other materials. Furnivall understood the need for an efficient excerpting system, and instituted several prefatory projects. In 1864, he founded the Early English Text Society, and in 1868, he founded the Chaucer Society for preparing general benefit editions of immediate value to the dictionary project. The compilation lasted 21 years.[citation needed] In the 1870s, Furnivall unsuccessfully attempted to recruit both Henry Sweet and Henry Nicol 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. [9] The dictionary project finally had a publisher 20 years after the idea was conceived. It would be another 50 years before the entire dictionary was complete. Despite the participation of some 800 volunteer readers, the technology of paper-and-ink was the major drawback regarding the arbitrary choices of relatively untrained volunteers about "what to read and select" and "what to discard." Late in his editorship Murray learned that one prolific reader W. C. Minor was a criminal lunatic. [10] Minor, a Yale University trained surgeon and military officer in the U.S. Civil War, was confined to Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane after killing a man in London. The story of Minor and Murray are is told in Simon Winchester 's The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary [11] (U.S. title -- elsewhere The Surgeon of Crowthorne : a tale of murder, madness and the love of words).

Minor invented his own quotation-tracking system allowing him to submit slips on specific words in response to editors' requests. Oxford editors James Murray in the Scriptorium at Banbury Road During the 1870s, the Philological Society was concerned with the process of publishing a dictionary with such an immense scope. Although they had pages printed by publishers, no publication agreement was reached; both the Cambridge University Press and the Oxford University Press were approached. Finally, in 1879, after two years' negotiating by Sweet, Furnivall, and Murray, the OUP agreed to publish the dictionary and to pay the editor, Murray, who was also the Philological Society president. The dictionary was to be published as interval fascicles , with the final form in four 6,400-page volumes. They hoped to finish the project in ten years. Murray started the project, working in a corrugated iron outbuilding, the " Scriptorium ", which was lined with wooden planks, book shelves, 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 than for abuse.[citation needed] Through newspapers distributed to bookshops and libraries, he appealed 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 professor Francis March manage the collection in North America; 1,000 quotation slips arrived daily to the Scriptorium, and by 1882, there were 3,500,000. 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 or U.S.$3.25.

The total sales were a disappointing 4,000 copies.[citation needed] The OUP saw 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 ; he did, in 1885. Murray had his Scriptorium re-erected on his new property. The 78 Banbury Road, Oxford , house, erstwhile residence of James Murray , Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary 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 he would accelerate his work pace with experience.[citation needed] That turned out not to be so, and Philip Gell of the OUP forced the promotion of Murray's assistant Henry Bradley (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 speedy production—to the point where the project's collapse seemed likely. Newspapers reported the harassment, 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 , starting in 1901, was responsible for N, Q-R, Si-Sq, U-V and Wo-Wy. Whereas previously the OUP had thought London too far from Oxford, after 1925 Craigie worked on the dictionary in Chicago , where he was a professor. The fourth editor was C. T.

Onions , who, starting in 1914, compiled the remaining ranges, Su-Sz, Wh-Wo and X-Z. It was around this time that J. R. R. Tolkien was employed by the OED, researching etymologies of the Waggle to Warlock range [12] ; he parodied the principal editors as "The Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford" in the story Farmer Giles of Ham . Julian Barnes also was an employee; he was said to dislike the work. Fascicles 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 would eventually become 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 now be a fascicle of 64 pages, priced at 2s.6d. or $1 U.S.

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 (OED) 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. The 125th and last fascicle, covering words from Wise to the end of W, was published on 19 April 1928, and the full Dictionary in bound volumes followed immediately. The early modern English prose of Sir Thomas Browne is probably the most frequently quoted source of neologisms in the completed dictionary. William Shakespeare is the most-quoted writer, with Hamlet his most-quoted work. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) is the most-quoted woman writer. Collectively, the Bible is the most-quoted work (but in many different translations); the most-quoted single work is Cursor Mundi .

Oxford English Dictionary and First Supplement Between 1928 and 1933 enough additional material had been compiled to make a one volume supplement so the dictionary was reissued as the set of 12 volumes and a one-volume supplement in 1933. Second Supplement and Second Edition In 1933 Oxford University 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; Onions , who turned 84 that year, was still able to make some contributions as well. 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 also 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. The work was expected to take seven to ten years.[citation needed] 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. By this time it was clear that the full text of the Dictionary would now 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. Editing an entry of the NOED using LEXX And so the New Oxford English Dictionary (NOED) project began. More than 120 keyboarders of the International Computaprint Corporation in Tampa, Florida , and Fort Washington, Pennsylvania , USA, 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 . A specialized search engine 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 of IBM. [13] The University of Waterloo, in Canada, volunteered to design the database. A. Walton Litz, 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." [14] 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 OED2 was printed in 20 volumes. For the first time, 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. Although the content of the OED2 is mostly just a reorganization of the earlier corpus, 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. Also, whereas Murray had devised his own notation for pronunciation, there being no standard available at the time, the OED2 adopted the modern International Phonetic Alphabet . Unlike the earlier edition, all foreign alphabets except Greek were transliterated.

The British quiz show Countdown has awarded the leather-bound complete version to the champions of each series since its inception in 1982. When the print version of the second edition was published in 1989, the response was enthusiastic. The author Anthony Burgess declared it "the greatest publishing event of the century," as quoted by Dan Fisher of the Los Angeles Times (25 March 1989). TIME dubbed the book "a scholarly Everest," [14] and Richard Boston , writing for the London Guardian (24 March 1989), called it "one of the wonders of the world." New material was published in the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series, which consisted of two small volumes in 1993, and a third in 1997, bringing the dictionary to a total of 23 volumes. Each of the supplements added about 3,000 new definitions. However, no more Additions volumes are planned, and it is not expected that any part of the Third Edition, or OED3, will be printed in fascicles.

Compact editions In 1971, the 13-volume OED1 (1933) was reprinted as a two-volume, Compact Edition, done 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 Supplement was at the second volume's end. The Compact Edition included, in a small slip-case drawer, a magnifying glass 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 OED2, 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.

Electronic versions A screenshot of the first version of the OED Second Edition CD-ROM software. Once the text of the dictionary was digitized and online, it was also available to be published on CD-ROM . The text of the First Edition was made available in 1988. 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) had some additions to the corpus, and updated software with improved searching features, but it had clumsy copy-protection that made it difficult to use and would even cause the program to deny use to OUP staff in the midst of demonstrating the product.[citation needed] Version 3.0 was released in 2002 with additional words and software improvements, though its copy-protection remained as unforgiving as that of the earlier version. Version 3.1.1 (2007) includes a return to the less restrictive nature of version 1, with 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 , using emulation programs . [15] [16] Version 4.0 of the CD, available since June 2009, works with Windows 7 and, for the first time ever, with Mac OS X (10.4 or better). [17] [18] This version will use 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. [19] The online database contains the entire OED2 and is updated quarterly with revisions that will be included in the OED3 (see below). The online edition is the most up-to-date version of the dictionary available. Whilst the OED web site is not optimised for mobile devices, they have stated that there are plans to provide an API which would enable developers to develop different interfaces for querying the OED.

[20] As the price for an individual to use this edition, even after a reduction in 2004, is £195 or US$295 every year, most subscribers are large organizations such as universities. Some of them do not use the Oxford English Dictionary Online portal and have legally downloaded the entire database into their organization's computers.[citation needed] Some public libraries and companies have subscribed as well, including, in March and April 2006, most public libraries in England, Wales, and New Zealand; [21] [22] [23] any person belonging to a library subscribing to the service is able to use the service from their own home. Another method of payment was introduced in 2004, offering residents of North or South America the opportunity to pay US$29.95 a month to access the online site. Third Edition The planned Third Edition, or OED3, is intended as a nearly complete overhaul of the work.

Each word is being examined and revised to improve the accuracy of the definitions, derivations, pronunciations, and historical quotations—a task requiring the efforts of a staff consisting of more than 300 scholars, researchers, readers, and consultants, and projected to cost about $55 million. The result is expected to double the overall length of the text. The style of the dictionary will also change slightly. The original text was more literary, in that most of the quotations were taken from novels, plays, and other literary sources. The new edition, however, will reference all manner of printed resources, such as cookbooks, wills, technical manuals, specialist journals, and rock lyrics. The pace of inclusion of new words has been increased to the rate of about 4,000 a year. The estimated date of completion is 2037. [24] [25] New content can be viewed through the OED Online or on the periodically updated CD-ROM edition. As of 1993, John Simpson is the Chief Editor.

Since the first work by each editor tends to require more revision than his later, more polished work, (work on the first edition was begun at A) it was decided to balance out this effect, by performing the early, and perhaps itself less polished, work of the current revision at a letter other than A. Accordingly, the main work of the OED3 has been proceeding in sequence from the letter M. When the OED Online was launched in March 2000, it included the first batch of revised entries (officially described as draft entries), stretching from M to mahurat, and successive sections of text have since been released on a quarterly basis; by December 2009, the revised section had reached reputeless. As new work is done on words in other parts of the alphabet, this is also included in each quarterly release.

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." The production of the new edition takes full advantage of computers, particularly since the June 2005 inauguration of the whimsically named "Perfect All-Singing All-Dancing Editorial and Notation Application ", or "Pasadena." With this XML -based system, the attention of lexicographers can be directed more to matters of content than to presentation issues such as the numbering of definitions. The new 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. [26] Other important computer uses include internet searches for evidence of current usage, and e-mail submissions of quotations by readers and the general public. Wordhunt was a 2005 appeal to the general public for help in providing citations for 50 selected recent words, and produced antedatings for many. The results were reported in a BBC TV series, Balderdash and Piffle .

The OED’s small army of devoted readers continue to contribute quotations; the department currently receives about 200,000 a year. Spelling Main article: Oxford 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 partly linguistic, that the English suffix mainly derives from the Greek suffix -ιζειν, (-izo), or the Latin -izāre; however, -ze is also an Americanism in the fact that 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. [27] See also -ise/-ize at American and British English spelling differences . The sentence "The group analysed labour statistics published by the organization" is an example of OUP practice.

This spelling (indicated with the registered IANA language tag en-GB-oed) is used by the United Nations , the World Trade Organization , the International Organization for Standardization , and many British academic publications, such as Nature , the Biochemical Journal , and The Times Literary Supplement . Criticisms Despite its claim of authority[citation needed] on the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary has been criticised from various angles. Indeed, it has become a target precisely because of its massiveness, its claims to authority, and, above all, its influence. 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". [28] Harris also criticises what he sees as the "black-and-white lexicography" of the Dictionary, by which he means its reliance upon printed language over spoken—and then only privileged forms of printing.

He further notes that, while neologisms from respected "literary" authors such as Samuel Beckett and Virginia Woolf are included, usage of words in newspapers or other, less "respectable", sources hold less sway, although they may be commonly used. [28] In contrast, Tim Bray , co-creator of Extensible Markup Language ( XML ), credits the OED as the developing inspiration of that markup language . Similarly, the author Anu Garg , founder of Wordsmith.org, has called the Oxford English Dictionary a "lex icon." [29] See also ^ Globe & Mail References Creaser, Wanda. Review of Willinsky, John, Empire of Words: The Reign of the Oxford English Dictionary. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 50:1 (1996): 108-109. JSTOR. 7 April 2008. [1] Harris, Roy (1982-09-03). "The History Men". Times Literary Supplement: 935–936. Further reading Caught in the Web of Words: J. A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary , by K. M.

Elisabeth Murray, Oxford University Press and Yale University Press, 1977; new edition 2001, Yale University Press , trade paperback, ISBN 0-300-08919-8. Empire of Words: The Reign of the Oxford English Dictionary , by John Willinsky, Princeton University Press , 1995, hardcover, ISBN 0-691-03719-1. The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary , Simon Winchester , Oxford University Press, 2003, hardcover, ISBN 0-19-860702-4. (UK title) A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary , by Simon Winchester; see The Surgeon of Crowthorne for full details of the various editions. Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary , by Lynda Mugglestone, Yale University Press, 2005, hardcover, ISBN 0-300-10699-8.

The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary , by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, Oxford University Press, 2006, hardcover, ISBN 0-19-861069-6. Treasure-House of the Language: the Living OED, Charlotte Brewer, Yale University Press, 2007, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-300-12429-3. Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made , by Jonathon Green, Jonathan Cape, 1996, hardcover, ISBN 0-224-04010-3. External links A comprehensive dictionary of the English language published by Oxford University Press, considered something of a gold standard for dictionaries. Abbreviated OED . 1983 February 24, Penguin Classics (publisher), Selected Tales, preface ...the initiation of the great Deutsches Wörterbuch, the many volumes of which were not completed by later scholars until 1961 and which has become the equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary. 2000, Steven A.

Benner et al., "Functional inferences from reconstructed evolutionary biology involving rectified databases—an evolutionarily grounded approach to functional genomics", Research in Microbiology, volume 151, part 2 The indexing makes possible not only the easy retrieval of genetic data (much as an index allows the retrieval of data from the Oxford English Dictionary), but also the comparison of genetic data within the database. 2001, Archives of Dermatology Sad to say, until a dictionary of dermatology equivalent to the Oxford English Dictionary comes into being, dermatology will forever be a twiglike imposter, rather than an authentic branch of knowledge. Translations OED editions | Oxford English Dictionary Home History of the OED OED editions OED editions The Oxford English Dictionary was originally published in fascicles between 1884 and 1928. A one-volume supplement was published in 1933, and four further supplementary volumes were published between 1972 and 1986. In 1989, a complete Second Edition was published, consisting of the original OED amalgamated with the supplementary volumes, and together with 5,000 completely new entries.

In 1993 and 1997, three volumes of Additions to the Second Edition were published. (For more details, see the history of the Dictionary .) The OED is now, for the first time, being completely revised, with the aim of producing an updated Third Edition. (For more details, see the preface to the Third Edition .) The online Dictionary contains the complete A to Z sequence of the Second Edition, its three-volume Additions Series, and also draft material from the revision programme, which represents the latest progress towards the Third Edition. More revised and new entries will be added to the online Dictionary every quarter, and these will eventually cumulate to form the complete new edition. The prefaces to the previous editions of the OED, and a list of staff and contributors to each edition, are archived on the following pages:

Question: In which year was the Oxford English Dictionary first published in ten volumes?
Answer: 1928