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OED, ORIGINS

Origins

The dictionary began as a Philological Society project of a small group of intellectuals in London (and unconnected to Oxford University):[16]: 103–104, 112  Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, who were dissatisfied with the existing English dictionaries.

The society expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844,[17] but it was not until June 1857 that they began by forming an "Unregistered Words Committee" to search for words that were unlisted or poorly defined 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:[18]

The society 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, and shifted their idea from covering only words that were not already in English dictionaries to a larger project. Trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary.[16]: 107–108  Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips. Later the same year, the society agreed to the project in principle, with the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED).[19]: ix–x 

Compact editions

In 1971, the 13-volume OED1 (1933) was reprinted as a two-volume Compact Edition, 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 first supplement was at the second volume's end. The Compact Edition included, in a small slip-case drawer, a Bausch & Lomb 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 20-volume OED2 (1989), 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.[70] After these volumes were published, though, book club offers commonly continued to sell the two-volume 1971 Compact Edition.[26]

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (second edition, 1991)

Part of an entry in the 1991 compact edition, with a centimetre scale showing the very small type sizes used

Electronic versions

A screenshot of the first version of the OED second edition CD-ROM softwareOED2 4th Edition CD-ROM

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.[71] 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) included the Oxford English Dictionary Additions of 1993 and 1997.

Version 3.0 was released in 2002 with additional words from the OED3 and software improvements. Version 3.1.1 (2007) added 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.[72][73] Version 4.0 of the CD has been available since June 2009 and works with Windows 7 and Mac OS X (10.4 or later).[74] This version uses 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.[75] The online database containing the OED2 is updated quarterly with revisions that will be included in the OED3 (see above). The online edition is the most up-to-date version of the dictionary available. The OED website is not optimized for mobile devices, but the developers have stated that there are plans to provide an API to facilitate the development of interfaces for querying the OED.[76]

The price for an individual to use this edition is £195 or US$295 a year, even after a reduction in 2004; 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,[77] and public libraries in New Zealand.[78][79]

Individuals who belong to a library which subscribes to the service are able to use the service from their own homes without charge.

See also