Oxford English Dictionary
In June 1857, a small group of intellectuals in London formed an Unregistered Words Committee to search for words that were unlisted or poorly defined in current dictionaries. Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall led this effort on behalf of the Philological Society. They had expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844, but it was not until November 1857 that Trench presented his report On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries. This study identified seven distinct shortcomings in contemporary dictionaries, including incomplete coverage of obsolete words and inconsistent dates for earliest use. The society ultimately realized that the number of unlisted words would be far more than the number of words already in existing dictionaries. They shifted their idea from covering only missing words to creating a truly comprehensive dictionary. On the 7th of January 1858, the society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary titled A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.
James Murray began working in a corrugated iron outbuilding called the Scriptorium which was lined with wooden planks and bookshelves. He tracked and regathered Furnivall's collection of quotation slips, which were found to concentrate on rare, interesting words rather than common usages. For instance, there were ten times as many quotations for abusion as for abuse. Murray appealed through newspapers distributed to bookshops and libraries for readers who would report as many quotations as they could for ordinary words. By 1880, there were 2,500,000 quotation slips arriving at the Scriptorium daily. Late in his editorship, Murray learned that one especially prolific reader, W.C. Minor, was confined to Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane after killing a man in London. Minor was a Yale University-trained surgeon and military officer who invented his own quotation-tracking system allowing him to submit slips on specific words in response to editors' requests. The story of how Murray and Minor worked together to advance the OED was retold in the 1998 book The Surgeon of Crowthorne.
The first dictionary fascicle was published on the 1st of February 1884, twenty-three years after Coleridge's sample pages. The 352-page volume covering words from A to Ant cost 12s 6d and total sales reached only 4,000 copies. Of these, eight were 352 pages long while the last one in each group was shorter to end at the letter break which eventually became a volume break. At this point it was decided to publish the work in smaller and more frequent instalments once every three months beginning in 1895 there would be a fascicle of 64 pages priced at 2s 6d. If enough material was ready, 128 or even 192 pages would be published together. This pace was maintained until World War I forced reductions in staff. Each time enough consecutive pages were available, the same material was also published in the original larger fascicles. In 1895, the title Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series. The full dictionary in bound volumes followed immediately after the 125th and last fascicle covered words from Wise to the end of W and was published on the 19th of April 1928.
Once 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 1987. Afterward, three versions of the second edition were issued with Version 1 released in 1992 identical in content to the printed second edition. Version 3.0 was released in 2002 with additional words from the OED3 and software improvements. On the 14th of March 2000, the Oxford English Dictionary Online became available to subscribers. The online database containing the OED2 is updated quarterly with revisions that will be included in the OED3. The price for an individual to use this edition is £100 or US$100 a year, consequently most subscribers are large organizations such as universities. Some public libraries and companies have also subscribed including public libraries in the United Kingdom where access is funded by the Arts Council. Individuals who belong to a library which subscribes to the service are able to use the service from their own homes without charge. By April 2014, the online version was receiving over two million visits per month.
Beginning with the launch of the first OED Online site in 2000, the editors began a major revision project to create a completely revised third edition expected to be completed in 2037 at a projected cost of circa £34 million. Revisions were started at the letter M, with new material appearing every three months on the OED Online website. The editors chose to start the revision project from the middle of the dictionary in order that the overall quality of entries be made more even since later entries in the OED1 generally tended to be better than earlier ones. In March 2008, the editors announced they would alternate each quarter between moving forward in the alphabet as before and updating key English words from across the alphabet along with other words which make up the alphabetical cluster surrounding them. With the relaunch of the OED Online website in December 2010, alphabetical revision was abandoned altogether. John Simpson was the first chief editor of the OED3 who retired in 2013 and was replaced by Michael Proffitt who is the eighth chief editor of the dictionary. The production of the new edition exploits computer technology particularly since the inauguration in June 2005 of the Perfect All-Singing All-Dancing Editorial and Notation Application or Pasadena.
British prime minister Stanley Baldwin described the OED as a national treasure while author Anu Garg founder of Wordsmith.org has called it a lex icon. Tim Bray co-creator of Extensible Markup Language credits the OED as the developing inspiration of that markup language. However despite its claims of authority the dictionary has been criticized since the 1960s because of its scope its British-centredness and relative neglect of World Englishes. 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 that has become like the English monarchy virtually immune from criticism in principle. He further notes that neologisms from respected literary authors such as Samuel Beckett and Virginia Woolf are included whereas those found in newspapers or other less respectable sources hold less sway regardless of their usefulness. The British quiz show Countdown awarded the leather-bound complete version to the champions of each series between its inception in 1982 and Series 63 in 2010 before the prize was axed after Series 83 completed in June 2021 as it was considered out of date.
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Common questions
When was the Oxford English Dictionary first proposed by the Philological Society?
The Philological Society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary on the 7th of January 1858. Richard Chenevix Trench presented his report On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries in November 1857 which identified seven distinct shortcomings in contemporary dictionaries.
Who edited the Oxford English Dictionary and what was their workspace called?
James Murray began working in a corrugated iron outbuilding called the Scriptorium which was lined with wooden planks and bookshelves. He tracked and regathered quotation slips from Frederick Furnivall while appealing to readers for quotations on ordinary words.
What date did the full bound volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary get published?
The full dictionary in bound volumes followed immediately after the 125th and last fascicle covered words from Wise to the end of W and was published on the 19th of April 1928. The title Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series in 1895.
How much does it cost an individual to subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary Online?
The price for an individual to use this edition is £100 or US$100 a year consequently most subscribers are large organizations such as universities. Individuals who belong to a library which subscribes to the service are able to use the service from their own homes without charge.
When will the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary be completed?
Editors began a major revision project to create a completely revised third edition expected to be completed in 2037 at a projected cost of circa £34 million. Revisions were started at the letter M with new material appearing every three months on the OED Online website.