Disclaimer: The sole purpose of this article is to provide content for the sample encylopedia. There is no claim to completeness or correctness.
“The Oxford English Dictionary has been the last word on words for over a century.” https://public.oed.com/history/
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language, i.e. on the meaning, history, and pronunciation of more than 600,000 words. REF1 The OED is a historical dictionary and traces back the historical development of the English language and its many variations REF2, and describes the usage of individual words through 3 million quotations from literature and non-fiction alike. Work on the OED began in 1857, with updates revising and extending the OED at regular intervals to adjust to the changes in the English language. REF3 The first electronic version of the dictionary was made available in 1989. An online version has been available since 2000 REF4
History REF5
Work on the dictionary began in 1857 as a project of the Philological Society of London, among them Richard Chenevix Trench and Herbert Coleridge, who decided that existing English language dictionaries were incomplete and deficient, and thus planned a comprehensive new dictionary of the English language. They underestimated the full extent of the work and the resources required, and the project proceeded slowly with changing editors. In 1879, the Society made an agreement with the Oxford University Press to begin work on a New English Dictionary REF6. James A. Murray became the first editor.
The OED was initially planned as a four-volume, 6400-page work to be published in 10 years´ time REF7. However, after five years Murray and his team had only covered words from “a” to “ant”. Additionally, they had to keep track of new words and new meanings, further complicating the task. In 1884 they managed to publish the first part (or ‘fascicle’). Over the next four decades, an increasing team of editors (supported by the public who submitted slips on specific words REF8) worked on the completion of the dictionary. After fifty years of work, the full dictionary in ten volumes, now named A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, was published in 1928, and contained over 400,000 words and phrases REF9.
Supplements and new editions
As soon as the New English Dictionary was completed, W.A. Craigie and C.T. Onions, the two editors in charge, began updating it to account for the continuous change of the English language, resulting in a single-volume Supplement to the Dictionary, published in 1933. “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.” REF10. Work on a new supplement began in 1957, with Robert Burchfield appointed the new editor, and was published in four volumes between 1972 and 1986. Burchfield emphasized the inclusion of modern-day English, new words from science and technology, as well as popular culture and colloquial speech, and the developments of the language in English-speaking regions beyond the United Kingdom. In 1984 Oxford University Press began work on the New Oxford English Dictionary Project (NOED) under the under the administrative direction of Timothy J. Benbow, with John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner as co-editors REF11. The goal was twofold: combining the original text, Burchfield’s supplement, and a small amount of newer material, into a single unified dictionary, and providing a full, electronic text to form the basis of future revision and extension of the Dictionary. The second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was printed in 20 volumes and published in 1989. Additionally, a CD-ROM edition was published in 1992, followed by an online publication in 2000. Not only has the format changed over the years, but also the content, which is under constant revision to ensure that the OED “not only provides an important record of the evolution of our language, but also documents the continuing development of our society.” REF12
Notes
1 OED Homepage: About: https://public.oed.com/about/
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary
3 OED Homepage: About: https://public.oed.com/about/
5 https://public.oed.com/history/
6 https://public.oed.com/history/#how-it-began
7 https://public.oed.com/history/#more-work-than-they-thought
8 Winchester
9 https://public.oed.com/history/#one-step-at-a-time
10 https://public.oed.com/history/#keeping-it-current