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The dictionary's latest, complete print edition (second edition, 1989) was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, which required 60,000 words to describe some 580 senses (430 for the bare verb, the rest in phrasal verbs and idioms).
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.
The historical English dictionary. An unsurpassed guide for researchers in any discipline to the meaning, history, and usage of over 500,000 words and phrases across the English-speaking world. Find out more about OED.
- Lucas Reilly
- The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was built on volunteer labor. When the London Philological Society came up with the idea for a new dictionary of the English language in 1857, the editors decided it was necessary to enlist the help of the public and asked avid readers to send examples of sentences that could illuminate the meanings of different words.
- It took more than 70 years to complete the first edition of the OED. Originally, the Philological Society predicted that the dictionary would take about 10 years to complete.
- The OED started out messy. Very messy. Frederick Furnivall, one of the dictionary’s founders, was a visionary—but that vision did not extend to his organizational skills.
- OED co-founder Frederick Furnivall was a controversial figure. After founding a controversy-riddled Shakespeare Society, Furnivall fell into a six-year feud with the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Instead of 6,400 pages in four volumes as originally planned, the Dictionary culminated in ten volumes containing over 250,000 main entries and almost 2 million quotations. It was published under the imposing name A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles although it had also come to be known as the Oxford English Dictionary. Sadly ...
Nov 12, 2019 · The last volume was published in 1928 and the now ten volume set included over 400,000 words and phrases. Because of the large amount of time it took to complete this project, volumes may have different copyright dates. Though the dictionary was "completed", language is continually evolving.
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Sep 11, 2023 · The catalyst for The Dictionary People was Ogilvie’s rediscovery of Murray’s ribbon-tied address books in a “dusty box” in the basement archive of Oxford University Press.
