The 125th and final issue included words by Wise at the end of W and was published on April 19, 1928, and the complete dictionary in bound volumes immediately followed. [18]:xx William Shakespeare is the most cited writer in the finished dictionary, Hamlet being his most cited work. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) is the most cited writer. Overall, the Bible is the most cited work (in many translations); the most cited work is Cursor Mundi. [8] After the printing of the corresponding issue, additional documents for a particular letter area were collected for inclusion in a supplement or revised edition. A one-volume supplement to this material was published in 1933, with entries aimed at the beginning of the alphabet in which fascicles had decades. [18] The supplement contained at least one word (Bondmaid) that was accidentally omitted when his notes were misplaced; [26] many words and meanings have been reinvented (famous appendicitis, invented in 1886 and missing from the 1885 fascicle, which became known when Edward VII postponed his coronation in 1902[27]); and some previously excluded as too obscure (notoriously radium, omitted in 1903, a few months before its discoverers Pierre and Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics). 28]). Also in 1933, the original fascicles of the entire dictionary were republished in 12 volumes under the title “The Oxford English Dictionary”.
[29] This 13-volume edition, including the supplement, was reprinted in 1961 and 1970. The dictionary began as a philological Society project of a small group of intellectuals in London (and unrelated to Oxford University):[15]:103-4,112 Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, who were dissatisfied with existing English dictionaries. The Society expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844,[16] but it was not until June 1857 that it began forming a “Committee of Unregistered Words” to search for words that were not listed or poorly defined in today`s dictionaries. In November, Trench`s report was not a list of unregistered words; Instead, it was the study On Some Deficiencyies in our English Dictionaries that identified seven distinct gaps in contemporary dictionaries:[17] In the end, however, only three additional volumes were published in this way, two in 1993 and one in 1997,[50][51][52], each with about 3,000 new definitions. [8] The possibilities of the World Wide Web and new computer technologies in general have significantly improved the processes of searching the dictionary and publishing new and revised entries. New text search databases have provided dictionary publishers with much more material to work with, and with the ability to publish to the web, publishers have been able to publish revised entries much faster and easier than ever before. [53] A new approach was needed and it was therefore decided to undertake a complete new revision of the dictionary. On March 14, 2000, the Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED Online) became available to subscribers. [76] The online database containing OED2 is updated quarterly with revisions that are included in OED3 (see above). The online edition is the most recent version of the dictionary on the market.
The OED`s website is not optimized for mobile devices, but the developers said there are plans to provide an API to facilitate the development of interfaces to query the OED. [77] The usefulness and reputation of the OED as a historical dictionary has given rise to many junior projects and other dictionaries bearing the Oxford name, although not all are directly related to the OED itself. Furnivall believed that since many printed texts from previous centuries were not readily available, it would be impossible for volunteers to effectively find the citations the dictionary needed. He later founded the Early English Text Society in 1864 and the Chaucer Society in 1868 to publish early manuscripts. [18]:xii Furnivall`s preparatory efforts lasted 21 years and provided many texts for public use and enjoyment, as well as important sources for lexicographers, but they did not really include the compilation of a dictionary. Furnivall recruited more than 800 volunteers to read these texts and record quotes. Although enthusiastic, the volunteers were not well trained and often made inconsistent and arbitrary selections. Finally, Furnivall handed over nearly two tons of supply slips and other materials to its successor. [20] The DFO`s claims of authority have also been challenged by linguists such as Pius ten Hacken, who notes that the dictionary actively strives to achieve purpose and authority, but can only achieve these objectives in a limited sense, as it is difficult to define the scope of what it encompasses.
[101] In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE) was published. Although NODE also aimed to cover current English, it was not based on the OED. Instead, it was a completely new dictionary created using corpus linguistics. [87] The publication of NODE was followed by a brand new edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, this time based on a shortening of NODE and not the OED; NODE (under the new title Oxford Dictionary of English or ODE) continues to be the main source of Oxford`s range of current English dictionaries, including the New Oxford American Dictionary, with the OED now serving only as the basis for historical scientific dictionaries. As a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary contains entries in which the oldest detectable recorded meaning of a word, whether current or obsolete, is presented first, and each additional meaning is presented in historical order based on the date of its first detectable recorded use. [6] Each definition is followed by several brief illustrative quotations, in chronological order from the first observable use of the word in that sense to the last detectable use for an obsolete meaning to indicate both its lifespan and the time elapsed since its dissolution, or to a relatively new use for current versions. John Simpson was the first editor-in-chief of OED3. With this XML-based system, lexicographers can devote less effort to presentation issues such as numbering definitions.