Auto-suggestion, gender politics, and the North-South divide On
looking into the June release from the OED June 2011 marks a
cumulative 98,000 revised and new entries published since the
OED went online in March 2000, with a total of 100,000 in sight
for the next quarterly release in September – if all goes well.
Another possible milestone next time round: 300,000 revised and
new senses (292,000 at present – and 31% of all the senses in
the Dictionary). The present release looks at a range of high-
profile terms from across the disciplines. We complete the
points of the compass: not a big stretch, as there are only four
principal ones – but it is always of interest to see whether the
documentary evidence leads us to structure related terms in
similar ways – or whether there are subtle differences which we
have to account for. In fact, the compass points share a similar
(almost identical) structure. This cannot be said, for example,
for the months of the year or the days of the week. Some of
these are quiet as