A short history of Oxford Dictionary
Oxford is famous for the Oxford English Dictionary, which has been the last word on words for more than a century. It is the largest dictionary of English, covering the history of the language and aiming to include all vocabulary from the start of the Early Middle English period (AD 1150) onward, along with earlier Old English words that have remained in use.
It was originally issued in installments (called 'fascicles) between 1884 and 1928. A second edition was published in 1989 and is currently available in print as twenty volumes. A full revision of the whole dictionary is underway, and the current text may be accessed online at www.oed.com. The project was originally planned by the Philological Society of London,
In 1857, existing English language dictionaries were unset and called for a complete re-examination of the language from Anglo-Saxon times onward. In 1879 the Society agreed with Oxford University Press to begin work on a New English Dictionary (which later became the Oxford English Dictionary). Scottish schoolmaster James Murray was recruited as editor.
This new dictionary was planned as a four-volume, 6,400-page work, and it was estimated that the task would be finished in approximately ten years. Five years later, when Murray and his colleagues had reached only as far as the word 'ant,' they were time to reconsider their ule. It is not surprising that the project was taking longer than anticipated. Not only is the English language formidably complicated, but it also never stops evolving. Murray and his staff had to keep track of new words and new meanings of existing words while trying to examine the previous seven centuries of the language's development.
The great, however, is not the only Oxford dictionary. In 1906, when work on the had reached the letter M, Humphrey Milford of Oxford University Press drew up a plan for two small dictionaries which would draw on the riches of the incomplete historical work.
The first was the Concise Oxford Dictionary, compiled by Henry Watson Fowler and his brother Frank from their cottage on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel. The first edition was published in 1911, priced at three shillings and sixpence and containing 1,041 pages of dictionary text and around 38,000 headwords. The new dictionary was warmly received: a
A review of the time called the book a marvel of condensation, achieved by skillful hands. At the same time, another asserted that it was 'the best small dictionary extant,' being 'literally without a rival". The Concise went on to become one of the most famous and successful English dictionaries in the world. For the eleventh edition (2004), its title was changed to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. The twelfth center
the nary edition was published in 2011: it contains 1,682 pages of dictionary text
and 66,500 headwords.
The second member of the range of small dictionaries to appear was the Pocket Oxford Dictionary, also edited by the Fowler brothers, which first came out in 1924 and is now its eleventh edition.
The Oxford range now stretches from the two-volume historical Shorter, first published in 1933, to the tiny Oxford English Mini Dictionary (first edition 1981). In 1998 a completely new title appeared: a single-volume dictionary larger than the Concise. The rapid rise of digital technology meant that literally millions of words of real text could now be processed and analyzed in a matter of seconds. Access to large databases of language and new ways of looking at the English language led to the production of a new dictionary, the New Oxford Dictionary of English. Now called simply the Oxford Dictionary of English, and in its third edition (2010), it is the main source from which the current Oxford range is derived.
Oxford dictionaries are now compiled and updated on a database accessible over the Internet from anywhere in the world, and they may be consulted either online or as print books. Drawing on the evidence of language use provided by the two-billion-word Oxford English Corpus and the Oxford Reading Programme, editors can write definitions that are as clear, accurate, and up to date as possible, ensuring that Oxford's texts remain the world's most trusted.
You must be logged in to post a comment.