Oxford English Dictionary

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary I was awarded in 7th grade in Holland years ago still stands proudly on my bookshelf. It bears witness of another era when words were looked up in books, and people such as principals, teachers and parents recognized the authority, quality and tradition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).  All of this and more are symbolized in this hardback edition of my prize dictionary.

No prescriptions, only descriptions
But what makes the historical Oxford English Dictionary of the English language that at one time consisted of 12 volumes and a 1-volume supplement so special? Basically this dictionary differs from other dictionaries by being descriptive, not prescriptive. This means that the OED makes no attempt to instruct or advise on correct English usage, rather they record the way English words are used or misused, spelled or misspelled. If they are misused or misspelled long enough and often enough, then they will at some stage find their way into the new dictionary however much it may anguish teachers, linguistic fanatics and etymological experts.

From four to ten volumes
The people involved in the first dictionary that was planned as a 10-year project to result in a four-volume, 6,400-page work including all English language vocabulary from 1150 AD onward, got a bit of a shock when they five years down the road only had reached as far as the word "ant". So what was planned as four volumes ended up as a 10-volume OED published in 1928 containing more than 400,000 words and phrases. Instead of 10 years, it took almost five decades!

OED2 has 20-volumes
In 1989 OED2 was published in 20 volumes. Times had changed and the time had come to turning the multi-volume dictionary taking up four feet of shelf space and weighing 150 pounds into a machine-readable edition. Five years later 120 keyboarders had retyped the old addition. More than fifty proofreaders had checked their work. The price: a staggering $13.5 million! Now a slim, shiny disk contains the Oxford English Dictionary. This easy-to-use electronic format has meant that the dictionary is used not only by scholars, but also people of all strata of life. It also means that the OED has turned into a living dictionary, forever evolving - and perhaps this marks an end of an era for 20-volume dictionaries.

Old and foreign words 
Many new words are old words that have acquired new meanings. An example could be "screen" that originally meant something to ward off a draught or the heat of a fire. Today screen has new meanings such as windscreens, screenplays, TV screens, screen savers and so on. OED doesn't just tell you what a screen is today, but also gives a historical perspective on the word.

Words imported from other languages have always taken place, but with multimedia and globalisation this happens faster today. Just think of pasta (Italian), croissant (French) or suduko (Japanese).

Quoted authors
The most cited authors in the current edition are:

1. William Shakespeare (151 occurences)
2. Walter Scott (118)
3. Geoffrey Chaucer (110)
4. Charles Dickens (87)

As ever, Shakespeare leads the field, yet 979 authors are cited over five times and 7,380 are cited once.

More than a dictionary
Now a third edition is on its way. This time there will be no supplements or new information put into the body of the old edition. The entire dictionary is being rewritten. The Oxford University Press is committed to this endeavour, even though it is not a commercially profitable enterprise. The new edition is budgeted to cost US$55 million and take 20 years to complete.

As they say, this is more than an English dictionary; it's a unique part of English culture providing record of the evolution of the English language and documents developments in society.

Related information
Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com