The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a comprehensive multi-volume A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with their glyphs, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. Many dictionaries also provide pronunciation information, word derivations, histories, or etymologies, illustrations, usage guidance, and examples in sentences. Dictionaries are most commonly... dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP). Generally regarded as the definitive dictionary of Modern English is the term used for the contemporary use of the English language. In terms of historical linguistics, it covers the English language after the Middle English period; that is, roughly, after the Great Vowel Shift, which was largely concluded after 1550. Despite some differences in vocabulary, material from... English, it includes 500,000 A headword (or head word) is the word under which a set of related dictionary definitions will be listed. This is the word that is used to locate the entry, and which dictates its alphabetical position within the dictionary. Depending on the size and nature of the dictionary, these definitions... headwords together with some 2.5 million illustrative A quotation is a fragment of a human expression that is being referred to by somebody else. Like a paraphrase, a quotation is introduced by a verbum dicendi. Most often a quotation is taken from literature, but also sentences from a speech, dialogue from a movie and lines from song... quotations.

The OED is the most comprehensive record of the English language, and its policy is to attempt to record all known uses and variants of a word in all varieties of English, worldwide, past and present. To quote 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 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.

The OED is the starting point for all scholarly work regarding words in English. Its choice of order in which to list variant spellings of headwords is influential on written English throughout the world.

Origins

The dictionary had no university connection originally; it was conceived in London — containing the City of London — is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England and a major world city. With over seven million inhabitants (Londoners) in Greater London area, it is amongst the most densely populated areas in Western Europe. Founded as The city of was... London as a project of the Philological Society, where Richard Chenevix Trench (September 9, 1807 - March 28, 1886) was an Anglican archbishop and poet. He was born at Dublin in Ireland (then part of Britain), and went to school at Harrow, and graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829. In 1830 he visited Spain. While incumbent of Curdridge Chapel... Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge (born 1830, died April 23, 1861) was a grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A genius, learned in many fields, he was the first person chosen by the Philogical Society to edit what ultimately became the Oxford English Dictionary. But he died of tuberculosis soon after the project started... Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick James Furnivall (February 4, 1825 - July 2, 1910), English philologist and editor, was born at Egham, Surrey, the son of a surgeon who made his fortune from running the private lunatic asylum at Great Fosters there. Frederick Furnivall was one of the three founders and the second editor of... Frederick Furnivall had become dissatisfied with the available A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with their glyphs, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. Many dictionaries also provide pronunciation information, word derivations, histories, or etymologies, illustrations, usage guidance, and examples in sentences. Dictionaries are most commonly... dictionaries of The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. It is the third most common first language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence... English.

In June 1857 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). Events January 9 - Earthquake at Fort Tejon, California with an estimated magnitude of 7.9 February 16 - The National Deaf Mute College (later renamed Gallaudet University) is established in Washington, DC becoming the first school for the advanced... 1857 they formed an "Unregistered Words Committee" with the goal of finding words not listed in existing dictionaries. But the report that Trench presented that November was not a simple list of unregistered words; it was a study On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries. These, he said, were sevenfold:

1. Incomplete coverage of obsolete words
2. Inconsistent coverage of families of related words
3. Incorrect dates for earliest use of words
4. History of obsolete senses of words often omitted
5. Inadequate distinction between synonyms
6. Insufficient use of good illustrative quotations
7. Space wasted on inappropriate or redundant content

Trench suggested that nothing short of a new and truly comprehensive dictionary would do: one that would be based on contributions from a large number of volunteer readers, who would read books, copy out passages illustrating various actual uses of words onto quotation slips, and mail them to the editor. In 1858 is a common year starting on Friday. Events January 14 - Felice Orsini and his accomplices fail to assassinate Napoleon III in Paris but their bombs kill 156 bystanders. Because of the involvement of French émigrés living in Britain, there is a brief anti-British feeling in France but... 1858 the Society agreed in principle to the project: A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED).

The first editors

Richard Chenevix Trench (September 9, 1807 - March 28, 1886) was an Anglican archbishop and poet. He was born at Dublin in Ireland (then part of Britain), and went to school at Harrow, and graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829. In 1830 he visited Spain. While incumbent of Curdridge Chapel... Trench played a key role in the first months of the project, but his Ecclesiastical means pertaining to the Church (especially Christianity) as an organized body of believers and clergy, with a stress on its juridical and institutional structure. Also see Ecclesiology. Categories: Stub ... ecclesiastical career meant that he could not give the dictionary the continued attention that it needed over a period that, it was realized, might easily be as long as 10 years. So Trench withdrew, and it was Herbert Coleridge (born 1830, died April 23, 1861) was a grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A genius, learned in many fields, he was the first person chosen by the Philogical Society to edit what ultimately became the Oxford English Dictionary. But he died of tuberculosis soon after the project started... Coleridge who became the dictionary's first editor.

On May 12 is the 132nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (133rd in leap years). There are 233 days remaining. Events 1191 - Richard I of England marries Berengaria of Navarre. 1264 - The Battle of Lewes, between King Henry III of England and the rebel Simon de Montfort, 6th... May 12, 1860 is the leap year starting on Sunday. Events March March 6 - Abraham Lincoln speaks against slavery in New Haven, Connecticut April April 3 - The Pony Express makes its first run. May May 1 - A chondrite type meteorite fell to earth in Muskingum County, Ohio near the town of New... 1860, Coleridge's plan for the work was published, and the research was set in motion. His home became the first editorial office; he ordered a grid of 54 pigeon-holes in which could eventually be arrayed 100,000 quotation slips. In April 1861 is a common year starting on Tuesday. Events January January 1 - Benito Juárez captures Mexico City January 2 - Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia dies and is succeeded by Wilhelm I January 3 - American Civil War: Delaware votes not to secede from the United States January 9 - Mississippi... 1861, the first sample pages of the dictionary were published... and then Coleridge, aged just 31, died of Tuberculous lungs show up on an X-ray image Tuberculosis is an infection with the bacterium u. The cause of tuberculosis, that can divide roughly every 20 minutes). It is a small rod-like bacillus which can withstand weak disinfectants and can survive in a dry state for weeks but... tuberculosis.

The editorship then fell to Frederick James Furnivall (February 4, 1825 - July 2, 1910), English philologist and editor, was born at Egham, Surrey, the son of a surgeon who made his fortune from running the private lunatic asylum at Great Fosters there. Frederick Furnivall was one of the three founders and the second editor of... Furnivall, who had great enthusiasm and knowledge, but definitely lacked the temperament for such a long-term project. His energetic start saw many assistants recruited and two tons of readers' slips and other materials delivered to his house, and in many cases passed on to these assistants. But as months and years passed, the project languished. Furnivall began to lose track of his assistants, some of whom assumed that the project was abandoned; others died and their slips were not returned. The entire set of quotation slips for words starting with H was later found in Tuscany (Italian Provinces of Tuscany Arezzo Florence (Firenze) Grosseto Livorno Lucca Massa-Carrara Pisa Pistoia Prato Siena Other notable cities and towns in alphabetical order Abbadia San Salvatore Borgo San Lorenzo Calci Capalbio Castiglione della Pescaia Castiglion Fiorentino Certaldo Collodi Cortona Empoli Fiesole Follonica Fucecchio Montalcino Montecatini Terme Montepulciano Orbetello... Tuscany; others were assumed to be waste paper and burned as From Old English . See also: punk, spunk, punkwood, touchwood, char, fire, campfire, kindling Categories: Procedural knowledge | Stub ... tinder.

In the 1870s Furnivall approached Henry Sweet (1845-1912) was a philologist. He specialized in languages related to English (Anglo-Saxon, Old Icelandic and West Saxon). Sweet also published on larger issues of phonetics and grammar in language, but his work on the Germanic languages is more widely remembered. Some of the books he wrote... Henry Sweet and Henry Nicol to succeed him, but neither one accepted the post. But then, at a Society meeting in 1876 is a leap year starting on Saturday. Events January January 31 United States orders all Native Americans to move into reservations. February February 2 - The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs of Major League Baseball is formed. February 14 - Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone... 1876, Sir James Augustus Henry Murray (1837-1915) was a Scottish lexicographer and philologist. He had no formal education after the age of fourteen but became a respected scholar by private study. He was the primary editor of the (US title The Professor and the Madman). Dr. William Chester Minor, a... James Murray declared his willingness to try.

The Oxford editors

At the same time the Society had become concerned about the publication of what it was now clear would have to be an immensely large book. Various publishers had been approached over the years, either to produce sample pages or for the possible publication of the whole, but no agreements had been reached. These had included both the The headquarters of the Cambridge University Press, in Trumpington Street, Cambridge. The Cambridge University Press is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses. It published its first book in 1584, making it the longest-established printing house in the... Cambridge and the Oxford University Press (OUP).

Finally in Events January January 2 - Fred Spofforth claims the first Hat-trick in test cricket. January 11 - Anglo-Zulu War begins. January 22 - Zulu troops massacre British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana. At Rorkes Drift, outnumbered British soldiers drive the attackers away after hours of fighting. February February 12... 1879, after two years of negotiations involving Sweet and Furnivall as well as Murray, the Oxford University Press agreed not only to publish the dictionary, but to pay Murray (who by this time was also president of the Philological Society) a salary as editor. They hoped that the work would now be completed in another 10 years.

It was Murray who really got the project off the ground and was able to tackle its true scale. Because he had many children, he chose not to use his house (in the London — containing the City of London — is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England and a major world city. With over seven million inhabitants (Londoners) in Greater London area, it is amongst the most densely populated areas in Western Europe. Founded as The city of was... London suburb of Mill Hill is a town in the London Borough of Barnet. Mill Hill enjoys the elevated house prices of London (and is oft quoted as the new Hampstead), yet is far away enough from the city center to be classified as a quiet suburb. Mill Hill is split into three... Mill Hill) itself as a workplace; an iron outbuilding, which he called the Scriptorium, was erected for him and his assistants. It was provided with 1,029 pigeon-holes and many bookshelves.

Murray now tracked down and regathered the slips already collected by Furnivall, but he found them inadequate because readers had focused on rare and interesting words: he had 10 times more quotations for abusion then for abuse. He therefore issued a new appeal for readers, which was widely published in Reading the newspaper: Brookgreen Gardens Pawleys Island, South Carolina A newspaper is a lightweight and disposable publication, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint, containing a journal of current news in a variety of topics. These topics can include political events, crime, sports, opinion, weather. Newspapers also often include... newspapers and distributed in Categories: Bookstores | Stub ... bookstores and , which means book. Derivations from the Greek , to mean . They were each endowed by Islamic sects (many of which have disappeared or become less important in our times) with the purpose of representing their tenets as well as promoting the dissemination of secular knowledge. The libraries often employed translators and... libraries. This time readers were specifically asked to report "as many quotations as you can for ordinary words" as well as all of those that seemed "rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar or used in a peculiar way." Murray arranged for the Pennsylvanian philologist, Francis March, to manage the process in North America. Soon 1,000 slips per day were arriving at the Scriptorium, and by 1882 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). Events February 2 - The Knights of Columbus are formed in New Haven, Connecticut February 7 - In Mississippi City the last heavyweight boxing championship bareknuckle fight takes place. February 14 - Llanelli Conservative Association founded. March 2 – Robert Maclean... 1882 there were 3,500,000 of them.

It was February 1 is the 32nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 333 days remaining, (334 in leap years). Events 1662 - The Chinese pirate Koxinga seizes the island of Taiwan after a nine-month siege. 1713 - The or is published. 1884 - Edition one of the Oxford English... February 1, 1884 is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar). Events January 4 - The Fabian Society is founded in London. February 1 - Edition one of the or Labour Day, is now a holiday recognized in almost every industrialized country. July 5 - Germany takes possession of Cameroon. August... 1884, 23 years after Coleridge's sample pages, when the first portion, or Fascicles are sections of a book, usually a reference work, that because of its length, is issued in parts so that the information may be made available to the public as soon as possible rather than waiting years or decades to complete the entire work. The Oxford English Dictionary was... fascicle, of the actual dictionary was finally published. The full title had now become A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society, and the 352 pages, covering words from A to Ant, were priced at The shilling was a British coin first issued in 1548 for Henry VIII, although arguably the testoon issued about 1487 for Henry VII was the first shilling. 1956 Elizabeth II British shilling showing English and Scottish reverses History Before decimalization in 1971, shillings had a value of 12 pence; equal... 12s. Above: A variety of coins considered to be lower-value, including an Irish 2p piece and many US pennies. A penny (pl. pence or pennies) is a unit of currency or a coin used in several English-speaking countries: 1/100 of the British Pound Sterling or the Irish pound... 6d. in The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a country in western Europe, and a member of the British Commonwealth and European Union. Usually known simply as the United Kingdom, UK or, inaccurately, as Great Britain or Britain, the UK has four constituent parts. Three of these parts... Britain (today this fraction of a The pound sterling, which strictly speaking refers to basic currency unit of sterling, now the pound, can generally refer to the currency of the United Kingdom (UK). The standard ISO 4217 currency code is , the Latin word for pound. In the UK, in order to distinguish the unit of currency... pound would be written Decimalization refers to any process of converting from traditional units, usually of money, to a decimal system. This process has been undergone by all countries except Mauritania and Madagascar, but in practice these currencies are of such low value that the subsidiary denominations have fallen out of use - the Euro... 62.5p) or The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. It is also widely used as a reserve currency outside of the United States. Currently, the issuance of currency is controlled by the Federal Reserve Banking system. The most commonly used symbol for the U.S. dollar is... $3.25 US. The total sales were a disappointing 4,000 copies.

It was now clear to the OUP that the time to complete the work would be much too long; they supplied additional funding for assistants, but made two new demands on Murray in return. The first was that he move from Mill Hill to Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 ( 2001 census). It is home to the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world. It is known as the city of dreaming spires, a term coined by Matthew Arnold... Oxford, which he did in 1885 is a common year starting on Thursday. Events January January 4 - The first successful appendectomy is performed by Dr. William W. Grant on Mary Gartside. January 20 - L.A. Thompson patents the roller coaster. January 26 - Troops loyal to the Mahdi conquer Khartoum February February 5 - King Leopold II... 1885. Again he had a Scriptorium built on his property (to appease a neighbour, this one had to be half-buried in the ground), and the Oxford Small-town post office and town hall in Lockhart, Alabama A post office is a facility (in most countries, a government one) where the public can purchase postage stamps for mailing correspondence or merchandise, and also drop off or pick up packages or other special-delivery items. Post offices also... post office paid his work the compliment of installing a new pillar box (mailbox) directly in front of his house.

Murray was more resistant to the second requirement: that if he could not meet the desired schedule, then he must hire a second senior editor who would work in parallel, outside of his supervision, on words from different parts of the alphabet. He did not want to share the work, and felt that it would eventually go faster as he gained experience. But it didn't, and eventually Philip Gell of the OUP forced his hand. Henry Bradley (1845-1923) was a philologist and lexicographer, the second editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1888 until his death. Categories: People stubs | 1845 births | 1923 deaths | Lexicographers ... Henry Bradley, who Murray had hired as his assistant in 1884 is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar). Events January 4 - The Fabian Society is founded in London. February 1 - Edition one of the or Labour Day, is now a holiday recognized in almost every industrialized country. July 5 - Germany takes possession of Cameroon. August... 1884, was promoted and began working independently in 1888 is a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). In Germany, 1888 is known as the 1888 Year of Three Emperors. Events January 3 - 91cm telescope first used at Lick Observatory January 12 ? Blizzards in Dakota and Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas - 235 dead, many... 1888, in a room at the The main entrance to the British Museum The British Museum is one of the worlds greatest and most famous museums. It was established in 1753 by Sir Hans Sloane, a physician and scientist who collected a great deal of literature and art at its present site at Montague House... British Museum in London. In 1896 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). Events January - April January 4 - Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state. January 5 - An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays. January 12 - H... 1896 Bradley similarly moved to Oxford, working at the university itself.

Gell continued to harass both editors with the commercial goal of containing costs and speeding production, to the point where the project seemed likely to collapse; but once this was reported in the Reading the newspaper: Brookgreen Gardens in Pawleys Island, South Carolina. A newspaper is a lightweight and disposable publication (more specifically, a periodical), usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint. It may be general or special-interest, and may be published daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly. General-interest... press, public opinion backed the editors. Gell was then fired, and the university reversed his policies on containing costs. If the editors felt that the dictionary would have to grow larger than had been anticipated, then it would; it was an important enough work for the time and money to be spent to finish it properly.

But neither Murray nor Bradley lived to see it done. Murray died in 1915 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). Events January 12 - The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of the U.S. Congress. January 12 - United States House of Representatives rejects proposal to give women the right to vote. January 13 – An... 1915, having been responsible for words starting with A–D, H–K, O–P, and T, or nearly half of the finished dictionary; Bradley died in 1923 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). Events January-June January 1 - Grouping of all UK railway companies into four larger companies January 10 - Lithuania seizes and annexes Memel January 11 - Troops from France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr area to force Germany... 1923, having done E–G, L–M, S–Sh, St, and W–We. By this time two additional editors had also been promoted from assistant positions to work independently, so the work continued without too much trouble. William Craigie (1867 - 1957) was a philologist and a lexicographer. He was the third editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and co-editor (with C. T. Onions) of the 1933 supplement. Categories: People stubs | 1867 births | 1957 deaths | Lexicographers ... William Craigie, starting in 1901 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). Events January-March January 1 - World celebrates what is regarded as the start of the new century. ( Zero-ists argument that new century should be celebrated in 1900 rejected worldwide). January 1 - The British colonies of New South... 1901, was responsible for N, Q–R, Si–Sq, U–V, and Wo–Wy; whereas the OUP had previously felt that London was too far from Oxford for the editors to work there, after Events January-May January 3 - Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy. January 5 - Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first female governor in the United States. January 21 - Albania declares itself a republic January 30 - Government of Turkey throws Patriarch Constantine VI out of Istanbul February 1... 1925 Craigie's work on the dictionary was done in Chicagos skyline at day Chicago is the third largest city in the United States, after New York City and Los Angeles, with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 US Census. It is the fourth largest city in North America and the seventh largest in... Chicago, where he had accepted a professorship. The fourth editor was Charles Talbut Onions (C.T. Onions) (1873-1965) was an English grammarian and lexicographer. He joined James Murray on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary at Oxford in 1895 and in 1914 he began independent editorial work with his own assistants. His . His last work is from 1932 to... C. T. Onions, who, starting in 1914 is a common year starting on Thursday. (see link for calendar) Events January 4 - 77 seal hunters freeze to death on ice near Labrador. January 5 - Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a days labor. February 13 - Copyright: In... 1914, covered the remaining ranges, Su–Sz, Wh–Wo, and X–Z.

The fascicles

By early 1894 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). Events January 7 - W.K. Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film. January 8 - A fire at the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago causes a good deal of damage. January 9 - New England Telephone and Telegraph... 1894 a total of 11 Fascicles are sections of a book, usually a reference work, that because of its length, is issued in parts so that the information may be made available to the public as soon as possible rather than waiting years or decades to complete the entire work. The Oxford English Dictionary was... fascicles had been published, or about one per year: 4 for A–B, 5 for C, and 2 for E. Of these, 8 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 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). Events January January 5 - Dreyfus Affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devils Island. February February 14 - First showing of Oscar Wildes last play The Importance of... 1895, there would now be a fascicle of 64 pages, priced at 2s.6d. (12.5p) or The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. It is also widely used as a reserve currency outside of the United States. Currently, the issuance of currency is controlled by the Federal Reserve Banking system. The most commonly used symbol for the U.S. dollar is... $1 US. If enough material was ready, 128 or even 192 pages would be published together. This pace was maintained thereafter until Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. Battle aftermath. Remains of the Chateau Wood World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, the War of the Nations, and the War to End All Wars, was a world conflict occurring from 1914 to... World War I forced reductions in staff. (The same material was also published in the original larger fascicles for those who might prefer them, each time enough consecutive pages were available.)

A second change in 1895 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). Events January January 5 - Dreyfus Affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devils Island. February February 14 - First showing of Oscar Wildes last play The Importance of... 1895 was the adoption of the title Oxford English Dictionary (OED)—but only on the outer covers of the fascicles. The original title was still the official one and appeared everywhere else.

The 125th and last fascicle, covering words from Wise to the end of W, was published on April 19 is the 109th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (110th in leap years). There are 256 days remaining. Events 1012 - Martyrdom of St Alphege in Greenwich, London. 1529 - At the Diet of Speyer a group of rulers (. 1928 - The final volume of the . 1938 - RCA- NBC... April 19, 1928 was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). Events January-May January 6- 7 - River Thames floods in London - 14 drowned January 17 - OGPU arrests Lev Trotsky in Moscow; he assumes a status of passive resistance and is exiled to Turkestan February - Kurume University... 1928, and the full dictionary in bound volumes followed immediately.

The First Edition and the first Supplement

It had been planned to publish the New English Dictionary in 10 volumes, respectively starting with A, C, D, F, H, L, O, Q, Si, and Ti; but as the project proceeded, the later volumes became larger and larger, and while the full 1928 edition officially retained the intended numbering, Volumes IX and X were actually published as two "half-volumes" each, split at Su and V respectively. The entire edition was also available as a set of 20 half-volumes, with two choices of binding. The price was 50 or 55 The Guinea coin of 1663 was the first British machine-struck gold coin. The first one was produced on 6 February 1663 (1662 Old Style), and was made legal currency by a Proclamation of 27 March 1663. 44 and one half guineas would be made from one Troy pound of... guineas (£52.50 or £57.75) depending on the format and binding.

It had been 44 years since the publication of A–Ant and, of course, the The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. It is the third most common first language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence... English language had continued to develop and change. So by this time the early volumes were noticeably out of date. The solution was for the same teams to now produce a Supplement, listing all words and senses that had developed since the relevant pages were first printed; this also gave the opportunity to correct any errors or omissions already noted. Purchasers of the 1928 edition were promised a free copy of the supplement when it appeared.

The supplement was again produced by two editors working in parallel. William Craigie (1867 - 1957) was a philologist and a lexicographer. He was the third editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and co-editor (with C. T. Onions) of the 1933 supplement. Categories: People stubs | 1867 births | 1957 deaths | Lexicographers ... Craigie, now being in the United States, did most of the research on American English or U.S. English is the diverse form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. It is the primary language used in the United States. According to the 1990 census, 97 percent of U.S. residents speak English well or very well. Only... American English usages; he also edited L–R and U–Z, while Charles Talbut Onions (C.T. Onions) (1873-1965) was an English grammarian and lexicographer. He joined James Murray on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary at Oxford in 1895 and in 1914 he began independent editorial work with his own assistants. His . His last work is from 1932 to... Onions did A–K and S–T. The work took another 5 years.

In 1933 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). Events January January 3 - Japanese troops occupy Shanghai January 5 - Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay. January 15 - Political violence has caused almost 100 deaths in Spain January 17 - US Congress... 1933 the entire dictionary was reissued, now officially under the title of Oxford English Dictionary for the first time. The volumes after the first six were adjusted to equalize them somewhat and eliminate the "half-volume" numbering; the main dictionary now consisted of 12 volumes, numbered as such, and respectively starting at A, C, D, F, H, L, N, Poyesye, S, Sole, T, and V. The supplement was included as the 13th volume. The price of the dictionary was now reduced to 20 guineas (£21), which must have dismayed the buyers from 1928 as they received their free supplements.

The second Supplement and the Second Edition

In 1933 The University of Oxford, situated in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Oxford University and Cambridge University are sometimes referred to collectively as Oxbridge. The two universities have a long history of competition with each other, as they are the two... Oxford University had finally put the great dictionary to rest; all work ended, and the quotation slips went into storage. But of course the The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. It is the third most common first language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence... English language continued to change, and by the time 20 years had passed, the outdatedness of the dictionary began to be bothersome.

There were three possible ways to update it. The cheapest would be to leave the existing work alone and simply compile a new supplement, of perhaps 1 or 2 volumes; but then anyone looking for a word or sense and unsure of its age would have to look in three different places. Or the existing supplement could be combined with the new material to form a larger supplement. The most convenient choice for the dictionary user would be for the entire dictionary to be re-edited and Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in an aesthetic form on paper or some other media. Before the development of such late 20th century innovations as dot matrix and inkjet printers, printed material was produced in print shops. In spite of centuries of innovation, the principle of printing remains... retypeset, with each change included in its proper alphabetical place; but of course this would be most expensive, with perhaps 15 volumes to be produced.

The OUP chose the middle approach, replacing the supplement with a new one. Robert William Burchfield (January 27, 1923 - July 5, 2004) was a scholar, writer, and lexicographer. Born in Wanganui, New Zealand, he studied at Victoria University in Wellington and, later, at Oxford University (Magdalen College) in England on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he was mentored by J.R.R. Tolkien. From... Robert Burchfield was hired in 1957 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). Events Environmental change The Africanized bee is accidentally released in Brazil The Asian Flu pandemic begins in China March 10 - Floodgates of The Dalles Dam are closed inundating Celilo Falls and ancient indian fisheries along the... 1957 to edit it; Charles Talbut Onions (C.T. Onions) (1873-1965) was an English grammarian and lexicographer. He joined James Murray on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary at Oxford in 1895 and in 1914 he began independent editorial work with his own assistants. His . His last work is from 1932 to... Onions, who turned 84 that year, was still able to make some contributions as well. The work was expected to take 7 to 10 years. It actually took 29 years, by which time the new supplement had grown to 4 volumes, starting with A, H, O, and Sea. They were published in 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. Events January January 2 - the Pierre Hotel Heist - Six men rob the safety deposit boxes of the Pierre Hotel in New York City. Loot is at least $4 million January 5 - President of the United States Richard Nixon orders the... 1972, 1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). Events January-February January 12 - UN Security Council votes 11-1 to admit the Palestinian Liberation Organization January 15 - Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison January 16... 1976, 1982 is a number and represents a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar Events January-February January 6 - William Bonin is convicted of being the freeway killer. January 8 - AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 - Mark Thatcher, son of the... 1982, and 1986 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. Events January January 1 - Spain and Portugal enter the European Community January 1 - Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands and is separated from the Netherlands Antilles. January 9 - After losing a patent battle with Polaroid, Kodak leaves... 1986 respectively, bringing the complete dictionary to 16 volumes, or 17 counting the first supplement.

But by this time it was clear that the full text of the dictionary now belonged Online means being connected to the Internet or another similar electronic network, like a bulletin board system. Some companies have online in their name, such as America Online. Although it sounds similar, online is not the same as on air. When one is online, one can receive and transmit information... online. Achieving this would still require QWERTY computer keyboard A computer keyboard is a peripheral modelled after the typewriter keyboard. Keyboards are designed for the input of written text, and also to control the operation of the computer. Physically, computer keyboards are an arrangement of rectangular or near-rectangular buttons, or keys. Keyboards typically have characters... rekeyboarding it once, but thereafter it would always be accessible for computer The phenomenal success of the Google search engine was mainly due to its powerful PageRank algorithm and its simple, easy-to-use interface. A search engine is a program designed to help find files stored on a computer, for example a public server on the World Wide Web, or one... 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.

LEXX Editor for the OED, sample entry (segment of) This is a front-of-screen photograph from a 3279 mainframe-attached screen, taken with an Olympus (I think) 35mm camera in late 1985 or early 1986. Shown is a segment of the visible screen from the top-left of the...

Editing an entry of the NOED using LEXX

And so the New Oxford English Dictionary (NOED) project was begun. Retyping the text alone was not sufficient; all the information represented by the complex Typography (from the Greek words (version 2.5). Vancouver: Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4. Often referred to simply as Bringhurst, it is widely respected as the modern authority on typographic style (excerpts). External links Comp.fonts FAQ: General Info - Section four of six of the newsgroup FAQ... typography of the original dictionary had to be retained, which was done by Markup refers to the use of a markup language to describe the structure and appearance of a particular document. Certain symbols are placed in a plain-text environment and are interpreted by a program (such as a web browser, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft Frontpage or Microsoft Word) or by a compiler... marking up the content in The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is a metalanguage in which one can define markup languages for documents. SGML is a descendant of IBMs Generalized Markup Language (GML), developed in the 1960s by Charles Goldfarb, Edward Mosher and Raymond Lorie (whose surname initials also happen to be GML). SGML... SGML; and a specialized The phenomenal success of the Google search engine was mainly due to its powerful PageRank algorithm and its simple, easy-to-use interface. A search engine is a program designed to help find files stored on a computer, for example a public server on the World Wide Web, or one... search engine and display software were also needed to access it. Under a 1985 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. Events Environmental and weather change Asian Tiger Mosquito, an invasive species is first found in Houston, Texas May 25 - Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge which kills approximately 10,000 people. September 19 - 8... 1985 agreement, some of this software work was done at the The University of Waterloo, also known as UW or simply Waterloo, is a medium-sized research-intensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The enrollment for 2003 was 21,550 undergraduate and 2,485 graduate students, with 787 full-time faculty members. The University was founded in... University of Waterloo, Canada is an independent sovereign state in northern North America, the northern-most country in the world, and the second largest in total area. Bordering the United States, its territorial claims extend north into the Arctic Ocean as far as the North Pole. Canada is a federation of ten provinces... Canada, at a Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary led by F.W. Tompa and Gastón Gonnet; this search technology would go on to be the basis for Open Text Corporation is a Canadian high-tech company based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It produces and distributes computer software applications designed to enable content management solutions for large corporate systems. Its flagship product, , an electronic document management system. This system was converted to a Web-based system. Livelink was... Open Text Corporation. Computer hardware, database and other software, development managers, and programmers for the project were donated by the British subsidiary of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. With over 330,000 employees worldwide and revenues of $96 billion (figures from 2004... IBM; the colour syntax-directed editor for the project, LEXX (http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/0/bc33186c36e05a9e85256bfa0067f698?OpenDocument), was written by Mike Cowlishaw is an IBM Fellow based at IBM UK’s Warwick location, a Visiting Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (roughly the equivalent of the NAE in the USA). Cowlishaw joined IBM... Mike Cowlishaw of IBM.

By 1989 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Events January January 7 - Akihito becomes Emperor of Japan following the death of Hirohito. The Heisei period begins January 8 - the Kegworth Air Disaster - A British Midland Boeing 737 crashes on approach to East Midlands Airport - 44 dead... 1989 the NOED project had achieved its primary goals, and editors Edmund Weiner and John Simpson, working online, had successfully combined the original text, Robert William Burchfield (January 27, 1923 - July 5, 2004) was a scholar, writer, and lexicographer. Born in Wanganui, New Zealand, he studied at Victoria University in Wellington and, later, at Oxford University (Magdalen College) in England on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he was mentored by J.R.R. Tolkien. From... 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. (And, naturally, the first edition A retronym is a new word or phrase coined for an old object or concept whose original name became used for something else, or was no longer unique. Retronym is a neologism coined by Frank Mankiewicz [1] and popularized by William Safire [2] in 1980 in the New York Times... 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 almost equal in size, although still varying somewhat. The 20 volumes respectively started with A, B.B.C., Cham, Creel, Dvandra, 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 For any word written in a language with two cases, such as those using the Latin, Greek, Armenian alphabet, capitalization is the writing of that word with its first letter in majuscules (uppercase) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lowercase). Capitalization custom varies with language. Nouns: In nearly all European... capitalized, allowing the dictionary user to readily see those words that actually require a capital letter. And whereas Murray had devised his own notation for pronunciation, there being no standard one at the time, the OED2 adopted today's The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. It is intended as a notational standard for the phonetic representation of all languages. Most of its symbols... International Phonetic Alphabet.

New material was published in the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series, two small volumes in 1993 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the allegedly rigged two crashes showing that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the following day. February 11 Janet Reno is selected by President Clinton as... 1993, and a third in 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the Bryant Gumbel signs off for the last time January 8 - Mister Rogers receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame January 9 - Yachtsman Tony Bullimore found alive five days after his boat capsized... 1997, bringing the dictionary to a total of 23 volumes. However, no more Additions volumes are planned, and the OED3 is not expected to appear in printed fascicles.

The Compact Editions

Meanwhile, in 1971 is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). Events January January 1 - British divorce Reform Act comes into force January 2 - 66 die in stairway crush at Rangers v Celtic football match, Glasgow, Scotland. See Ibrox disaster. January 2 - A ban on television cigarette advertisements... 1971, the full content of the 13-volume OED1 from 1933 was reprinted as a Compact Edition of just 2 volumes. This was achieved by photographically reducing each page to 1/2 its original linear dimensions, so that 4 original pages were shown on each page ("4-up" format). The two volumes started at A and P, with the Supplement included at the end of the second volume.

The Compact Edition was sold in a case that also included, in a small drawer, a A magnifying glass A magnifying glass is a single convex lens which is used to produce a magnified image of an object. The lens is usually mounted in a frame with a handle. The magnifying glass is the simplest form of optical microscope. A magnifying glass works by creating a... magnifying glass to help users read the reduced type. Many copies were sold through A book club is a club where people usually meet to discuss a book that they have read and express their opinions, likes, dislikes, etc. More known as book discussion clubs, which are usually held in libraries, bookstores, etc. One famous book club is Oprahs Book Club, which was... book clubs, which distributed them cheaply as A Premium can be either an expression that something is better than something else; a premium product being considered better than a standard product the additional amount paid for something over and above its fair value, in order that it possession can be assured; for example in order to rent... premiums to their members.

In 1987 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. Events Environmental change Varroa destructor, an invasive parasite is found in the US October 15 - Hurricane force winds cause extensive damage in southern England. January January 1 - Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories, changes its name to Iqaluit. In 1999... 1987 the second Supplement was published as a third volume in the same Compact Edition format. For the OED2, in 1991 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. Events January January 2 - Sharon Pratt Dixon is sworn in as mayor of Washington, DC becoming the first black woman to lead a city of that size and importance. January 4 - The United Nations Security Council votes unanimously... 1991, the Compact Edition format was changed to 1/3 of the original linear dimensions (9-up), requiring stronger magnification but also allowing the entire dictionary to be published in a single volume for the first time. Even after these volumes had been published, though, book club offers commonly continued to feature the 2-volume 1971 Compact Edition.

The electronic versions

Screenshot of the first CD-ROM edition of the OED

Now that the text of the dictionary was online, it could also be published on The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. A CD-ROM is a flat, plastic disc with digital information encoded... CD-ROM. There have been three versions so far. Version 1 ( 1992 is a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. Events January January - The Internet Society is formed. January 1 Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt replaces Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru as United Nations Secretary-General George H. W. Bush becomes the first... 1992) was identical in content to the printed Second Edition, and the CD itself was not copy-protected. Version 2 ( 1999 is a common year starting on Friday of the Common Era, and was designated the ) March 29 - For the first time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 10000 mark at 10006.78. April April 1 - Nunavut, an Inuit homeland, part of the Northwest Territories becomes Canadas... 1999) had some additions to the corpus, and updated software with improved searching features, but had clumsy copy-protection that made it difficult to use and would even cause the program to deny use to OUP staff in the middle of demonstrations of the product. Version 3 ( 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. It was designated: reporter Daniel Pearl March 31 - Ukraine: elections for the Parliament April April 2 - Israeli forces surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where Palestinian terrorists are holding around 200 hostages. A siege ensues. April... 2002) has additional words and software improvements, though its copy-protection is just as annoying and unforgiving as that of the earlier version.

Screenshot of the online OED

In March 2000 - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes.css; @import /skins/monobook/IE55Fixes.css; @import /skins/monobook/IE60Fixes.css; /**/ 2000 From Wikipedia 2000 is a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. Popular culture also holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd... 2000, the Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED Online) became available to subscribers. The online database contains the entire OED2 and is also updated quarterly with revisions which will be included in the OED3 (see below). The online edition is the most up-to-date one available.

As the price for an individual to use this edition, even after a reduction in 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. It was designated the: ) lands on Mars. January 8 - Queen Elizabeth II christens the ) lands on Mars. January 27 - The British government narrowly wins a House of Commons vote on the proposed introduction of tutition top-up fees... 2004, is The pound sterling, which strictly speaking refers to basic currency unit of sterling, now the pound, can generally refer to the currency of the United Kingdom (UK). The standard ISO 4217 currency code is , the Latin word for pound. In the UK, in order to distinguish the unit of currency... £195 or The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. It is also widely used as a reserve currency outside of the United States. Currently, the issuance of currency is controlled by the Federal Reserve Banking system. The most commonly used symbol for the U.S. dollar is... $295 every year, most subscribers are large organizations such as A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. can award degrees of any kind. In France, students can also attend Grandes écoles, which are very prestigious and elitist schools, with small promotions—usually a... 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. Some public libraries and companies have subscribed as well.

A slightly more appealing method of payment was also introduced in 2004, offering residents of North or South America the opportunity to pay $29.95 US a month in order to access the online site. This allows people who have a less frequent pattern of usage to save versus the yearly plan.

The Third Edition

The planned third edition, or OED3, is intended as a nearly complete overhaul of the work. Currently ( 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. Events January Iraqi police officers hold up their index fingers marked with purple indelible ink, a security measure to prevent double voting. Worldwide aid effort continues to develop in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. January 3... 2005) John Simpson is the Chief Editor. Since the first work by each editor tends to require somewhat more revision than his later, more polished work, it was decided to balance out this effect by performing the early, and perhaps itself less polished, work of this revision pass 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 September 2004, the revised section reached as far as ottroye. As new work is done on words in other parts of the alphabet, this is also included in each quarterly release.

New content can be viewed through the OED Online (by subscription or at libraries offering this service) or on the periodically updated CD-ROM edition. It is even possible that the OED3 will never be printed conventionally, but will only ever be available through the medium of a computer. That will be a decision for the future, when it is nearer completion.

The actual production of the new edition, of course, takes full advantage of The tower of a personal computer (specifically a Power Mac G5). A computer is a device or machine for making calculations or controlling operations that are expressible in numerical or logical terms. Computers are constructed from components that perform simple well-defined functions. The complex interactions of these components endow... computers, and not just for Notepad is the standard text editor for Microsoft Windows A text editor is a piece of computer software for editing plain text. It is distinguished from a word processor in that it does not manage document formatting or other features commonly used in desktop publishing. Text editors are often provided... text editing. The An Graphic representation of the WWW information network structure around Wikipedia, as represented by hyperlinks The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly available worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardised Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols. It is made... Internet can now be searched for evidence of current usage, and submissions from readers, and the general public, now often arrive by Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. Start the E mail article If you have created this page in the past few minutes and it has not yet appeared, it may not be visible due to a delay in updating the database. Please wait and check... e-mail.

Spelling

The OED lists British spellings for headwords first (for example, labour and centre), followed by other variants (labor, center, etc.). OUP policy also dictates that -ize suffixes be used (instead of -ise) for many words more commonly ending in -ise, even if the root is Latin rather than Greek.

The sentence "The group analysed labour statistics published by the organization" is an example of OUP practice. This spelling (which can be indicated by the registered The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is an organisation that oversees IP address, top level domain and Internet protocol code point allocations. IANA was formerly one man, the late Jon Postel. General information IANA delegates local registrations of IP addresses to Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Each RIR allocates addresses for... IANA language tag en-GB-oed) is used by the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Organization for Standardization and other organizations and academic publishers.

Miscellanea

• J. R. R. Tolkien in 1916. He is wearing a WWI-era British Army uniform in this photograph. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) was the author of and is anglicized from , foolhardy). The character of Professor Rashbold in , beginning with and , written while recuperating... J. R. R. Tolkien was once an employee of the OED. So was Julian Barnes (born January 19, 1946) is a contemporary British writer whose novels and short stories have been seen as examples of postmodernism in literature. He has twice been short listed for the Booker Prize (once in 1984 for Flauberts Parrot and once in 1998 for England, England). He... Julian Barnes, but he did not like the work.
• The early modern English prose of Sir Sir Thomas Browne (October 19, 1605 - October 19, 1682) was an English author of varied works that disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric. Brownes writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the Scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry... Thomas Browne is the most frequently quoted source of In linguistics, a neologism is a recently coined word, or the act of inventing a word or phrase. Additionally it can imply the use of old words in a new sense such as giving new meanings to existing words or phrases. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena... neologisms.
• Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. Start the William-Shakespeare article Search for William-Shakespeare in other articles Look for William-Shakespeare in Wiktionary, our sister dictionary project. Look for William-Shakespeare in the Commons, our repository for free images, music, sound, and video. If... William Shakespeare is the most-quoted author.
• Mary Ann Evans, known by the pen name George Eliot (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880), was an English novelist. Born on a farm near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, she wrote about life in country towns in many of her novels. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure... George Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans) is the most-quoted female.
• Cursor Mundi, meaning runner of the world, is the name of a lengthy (around 30,000 lines) religious history written around 1300 AD. It was extremely popular in its time. The author was an anonymous cleric. The poem, written in early Middle English, retells the history of the world as... Cursor Mundi, a religious epic written around Events Beginning of the Renaissance. Abacus first used in China. Money from Florence, Italy becomes the first International Currency. Philip IV of France begins attempt to annex Flanders. Wenceslas II of Bohemia becomes King of Poland. Jubilee of Pope Boniface VIII. The Tuareg establish a state centered on Agadez. Births... 1300, is the most-quoted work.
• One of the most prolific early contributors as a reader, William Chester Minor (W. C. Minor, June 1834 - March 26, 1920) was an American surgeon who made many scholarly contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary while confined to a lunatic asylum. Minor was born on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the son of Congregationalist Church missionaries from New... Dr. W. C. Minor, was at the time imprisoned in a criminal lunatic asylum. He invented his own system of tracking quotations so he could send in his slips only when the editors were ready to use them.
• Tim Bray co-invented XML and XML namespaces while an Invited Expert at the World Wide Web Consortium between 1996 and 1999. From 1987 to 1989 he served as manager of the New Oxford English Dictionary project at the University of Waterloo. In 1989, he co-founded Open Text Corporation... Tim Bray, co-creator of the eXtensible Markup Language ( The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C recommendation for creating special-purpose markup languages. It is a simplified subset of SGML, capable of describing many different kinds of data. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of structured text and information across the Internet. Languages based on XML... XML), credits the OED as the inspiration behind the development of the next-generation web language.

See also

• The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, often abbreviated to . An abridgement of the complete work was contemplated from 1879, when the Oxford University Press took over from the Philological Society on what was then known as was to present in miniature all the features of the principal work and to be... Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
• Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD) is probably the best-known smaller Oxford dictionaries. It was started as a derivative of the Oxford English Dictionary although section S-Z had to be written before the Oxford English Dictionary actually reached that stage. Editors First Edition (1911): H. W. Fowler and F. G... Concise Oxford Dictionary
• The New Oxford Dictionary of English (often abbreviated to NODE) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. This dictionary is not based on the Oxford English Dictionary and should not be mistaken for a new or updated version of the OED. It is a completely new dictionary which... New Oxford Dictionary of English
• Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (intended for non-native speakers of English)
• Canadian Oxford Dictionary
• , which in turn had been based on the 1841 edition of Noah Websters (1894) and of new vocabulary, published in 1909, completed the dictionary. A reformatted edition, or (edited by H.G. Emery and K.G. Brewster; revision editor, Catherine B. Avery,) was published by Appleton-Century-Crofts of... The Century Dictionary
• A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with their glyphs, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. Many dictionaries also provide pronunciation information, word derivations, histories, or etymologies, illustrations, usage guidance, and examples in sentences. Dictionaries are most commonly... Dictionary

Further reading

• Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, edited by John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, Clarendon Press, 1989, twenty volumes, hardcover, ISBN 0198611862
• Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, K. M. Elisabeth Murray, Yale University Press, 2001, trade paperback, ISBN 0300089198
• Empire of Words, The Reign of the Oxford English Dictionary, John Willinsky, Princeton University Press, 1995, hardcover, ISBN 0691037191
• The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester, Oxford University Press, 2003, hardcover, ISBN 0198607024
• (UK title) The Surgeon of Crowthorne / (US title) The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester, HarperCollins, 1998, hardcover, ISBN 0060175966

External links

• The Oxford English Dictionary's official website (http://www.oed.com/)
• Their Archive of documents (http://oed.com/archive/) (as page images), which includes Richard Chenevix Trench (September 9, 1807 - March 28, 1886) was an Anglican archbishop and poet. He was born at Dublin in Ireland (then part of Britain), and went to school at Harrow, and graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829. In 1830 he visited Spain. While incumbent of Curdridge Chapel... Trench's original "Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries" paper and Sir James Augustus Henry Murray (1837-1915) was a Scottish lexicographer and philologist. He had no formal education after the age of fourteen but became a respected scholar by private study. He was the primary editor of the (US title The Professor and the Madman). Dr. William Chester Minor, a... Murray's original appeal for readers
• Their page of OED statistics (http://oed.com/about/facts.html), and another such page (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/facts/).