Oxford English Dictionary

October 20, 2025 - The dictionary began as a Philological Society project of a small group of intellectuals in London (and unconnected to Oxford University): Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, who were dissatisfied with the existing English dictionaries.

August 14, 2012 - Example queries I can run are "Which words in English are borrowed from French?", "Which words were first used by Charles Dickens?" or "How are words added to the dictionary?".

August 16, 2012 - Furnivall was appointed in 1857 to the Philological Society’s Unrecorded Words Committee (it is likely, in fact, that Furnivall suggested to Richard Chenevix Trench that the Society collect early words not recorded in contemporary dictionaries). Furnivall became the editor of the New English Dictionary after the death of Herbert Coleridge in 1861.

April 25, 2018 - Example queries I can run are "Which words in English are borrowed from French?", "Which words were first used by Charles Dickens?" or "How are words added to the dictionary?".

September 6, 2021 - Example queries I can run are "Which words in English are borrowed from French?", "Which words were first used by Charles Dickens?" or "How are words added to the dictionary?". I cannot search for synonyms yet, but I’m ready to help with other advanced searches.

October 16, 2023 - In 1919 and 1920, J.R.R. Tolkien worked for the dictionary, where he studied the etymology of Germanic words beginning with the letter w, composing drafts for words like waggle and wampum.

Also available online at: www.oed.com ... J. A. Simpson worked on the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary and prepared the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, which was published in 1982.

June 6, 2020 - In 1857, the Philological Society of London thought the three dictionaries of English, including one published by Noah Webster, were woefully inadequate to illustrate the diverse language.

June 16, 2022 - Example queries I can run are "Which words in English are borrowed from French?", "Which words were first used by Charles Dickens?" or "How are words added to the dictionary?". I cannot search for synonyms yet, but I’m ready to help with other advanced searches.

The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, and over 1,000 years of English.

August 26, 2022 - Our Dictionaries What happened to Oxford Dictionaries? Oxford Dictionaries Premium Children’s Dictionaries English Learner's Dictionaries

October 12, 2022 - For the rest of the 1890s, Minor would send as many as 20 quotations a day to the subeditors in Oxford. His submissions had a ridiculously high acceptance rate; so high, in fact, that in the OED’s first volume—then called A New English Dictionary, published in 1888—James Murray added a line of thanks to “Dr.

January 13, 2011 - The "metadata" recorded by Minor and other volunteers was recorded on special slips of paper, then sent to Oxford. Multiple citations and definitions of identical words were manually considered, before being entered into the dictionary.

Principal Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, James Augustus Henry Murray was born the son of a tailor in Denholm, Scotland. Educated locally until the age of 14, Murray showed an aptitude for language from a very early age, eventually learning around 25 different languages.

Example queries I can run are "Which words in English are borrowed from French?", "Which words were first used by Charles Dickens?" or "How are words added to the dictionary?". I cannot search for synonyms yet, but I’m ready to help with other advanced searches.

September 3, 2025 - I guess there is some personal fascination with the dictionary, but who doesn’t appreciate a well-chosen word, a lovely turn of phrase, or the etymology of an interesting term? In 1928, when the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was finally completed after a little over seventy years, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin began his toast with the remark that if he were lost on a deserted island, he would choose the OED for company because, “Our history, our novels, our poems, our plays — they are all in this one book.” I fully agree.

April 9, 2020 - James Murray, surrounded by thousands of postcard-sized quotations, brought the dictionary to life in this "scriptorium". (Getty: PA Images) abc.net.au/news/history-of-the-oxford-english-dictionary/12010628Link copied

Below is the original preface to the Third Edition of the OED, written by former Chief Editor, John Simpson. To read about the latest developments to the OED, you can…

May 22, 2025 - Review: The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes who Created the Oxford English Dictionary (Chatto & Windus)

July 20, 1998 - Sir James Murray (born February 7, 1837, Denholm, Roxburghshire [now Scottish Borders], Scotland—died July 26, 1915, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England) was a Scottish lexicographer and the first editor (from 1879) of A New English Dictionary on ...