When was the first volume of the Oxford Dictionary published?
Oxford English Dictionary
Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but it was only in 1884 that it began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society". In 1895, the title "The Oxford English Dictionary" ("OED") was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, the title "The Oxford English Dictionary" fully replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the second edition was published. Since 2000, compilation of a third edition of the dictionary has been underway, approximately half of which is complete.
A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words
The first edition was published in 1859, with the full title and subtitle: "A dictionary of modern slang, cant, and vulgar words: used at the present day in the streets of London, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the houses of Parliament, the dens of St. Giles, and the palaces of St. James : preceded by a history of cant and vulgar language : with glossaries of two secret languages, spoken by the wandering tribes of London, the costermongers, and the patterers". It has also been published as The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal.
Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography
The "Dictionary" was issued by part publication, and its first edition appeared from 1857 to 1863. In collected form (1863) there were three volumes, originally issued in 16 parts. A later edition appeared from 1876.
The Oxford Book of Carols
The Oxford Book of Carols is a collection of vocal scores of Christmas carols and carols of other seasons. It was first published in 1928 by Oxford University Press and was edited by Percy Dearmer, Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams. It became a widely used source of carols among choirs and church congregations in Britain.
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology is an etymological dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press. The first editor of the dictionary was Charles Talbut Onions who spent his last twenty years largely devoted to completing "The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology" (1966), which treated over 38,000 words and went to press just before his death. Also published by OUP:
Oxford English Dictionary
The first electronic version of the dictionary was made available in 1988. The online version has been available since 2000, and as of April 2014 was receiving over two million hits per month. The third edition of the dictionary will most likely only appear in electronic form: the Chief Executive of Oxford University Press has stated that it is unlikely that it will ever be printed.
Oxford English Dictionary
Once the text of the dictionary was digitized and online, it was also available to be published on CD-ROM. The text of the first edition was made available in 1987. Afterward, three versions of the second edition were issued. Version 1 (1992) was identical in content to the printed second edition, and the CD itself was not copy-protected. Version 2 (1999) included the "Oxford English Dictionary" "Additions" of 1993 and 1997.
Oxford English Dictionary
In the 1870s, Furnivall unsuccessfully attempted to recruit both Henry Sweet and Henry Nicol to succeed him. He then approached James Murray, who accepted the post of editor. In the late 1870s, Furnivall and Murray met with several publishers about publishing the dictionary. In 1878, Oxford University Press agreed with Murray to proceed with the massive project; the agreement was formalized the following year. The dictionary project finally had a publisher 20 years after the idea was conceived. It was another 50 years before the entire dictionary was complete.
Oxford Dictionary of Biology
The first edition of "Oxford Dictionary of Biology" was first published in 1985 and the seventh edition in 2015.
Canadian English
In 1998, Oxford University Press produced a Canadian English dictionary, after five years of lexicographical research, entitled "The Oxford Canadian Dictionary". A second edition, retitled "The Canadian Oxford Dictionary", was published in 2004. Just as the older dictionaries it includes uniquely Canadian words and words borrowed from other languages, and surveyed spellings, such as whether "colour" or "color" was the more popular choice in common use. Paperback and concise versions (2005, 2006), with minor updates, are available.
Oxford English Dictionary
By early 1894, a total of 11 fascicles had been published, or about one per year: four for "A–B", five for "C", and two for "E". Of these, eight were 352 pages long, while the last one in each group was shorter to end at the letter break (which eventually became a volume break). At this point, it was decided to publish the work in smaller and more frequent instalments; once every three months beginning in 1895 there would be a fascicle of 64 pages, priced at 2s 6d. If enough material was ready, 128 or even 192 pages would be published together. This pace was maintained until World War I forced reductions in staff. Each time enough consecutive pages were available, the same material was also published in the original larger fascicles. Also in 1895, the title "Oxford English Dictionary" ("OED") was first used. It then appeared only on the outer covers of the fascicles; the original title was still the official one and was used everywhere else.
A Dictionary of the English Language
Despite the criticisms, "The influence of the "Dictionary" was sweeping. Johnson established both a methodology for how dictionaries should be put together and a paradigm for how entries should be presented. Anyone who sought to create a dictionary, post-Johnson, did so in his shadow." "In his history of the "Oxford English Dictionary", Simon Winchester asserts of its eighteenth-century predecessor that 'by the end of the century every educated household had, or had access to, the great book. So firmly established did it swiftly become that any request for "The Dictionary" would bring forth Johnson and none other.' 'One asked for The Dictionary,' writes Winchester, 'much as one might demand The Bible.'" One of the first editors of the "OED", James Murray, acknowledged that many of Johnson's explanations were adopted without change, for 'When his definitions are correct, and his arrangement judicious, it seems to be expedient to follow him.' ... In the end the "OED" reproduced around 1,700 of Johnson's definitions, marking them simply 'J.'."
Alexander Chalmers' General Biographical Dictionary
The "Dictionary" was an enlarged edition of the "New and General Biographical Dictionary", which was first published in eleven volumes in 1761. Other editions of this compilation appeared in 1784 and in 1798–1810. The latter, in fifteen volumes, was edited (first five) by William Tooke, and (last ten) by Archdeacon Nares and William Beloe. Then Chalmers's edition had as full title "The General Biographical Dictionary: containing an historical and critical account of the lives and writings of the most eminent persons in every nation, particularly the British and Irish, from the earliest accounts to the present time". The first four volumes of this work, in octavo, were published monthly, commencing in May 1812, and then a volume appeared every alternate month to the thirty-second and last volume in March 1817, a period of four years and ten months of incessant labour and of many personal privations. The preceding edition of the "Dictionary" was augmented by 3,934 additional lives, and of the remaining number 2,176 were rewritten; while the whole were revised and corrected. The total number of articles exceeds nine thousand. For many years Chalmers was employed by the booksellers in revising and enlarging the "Dictionary"; but at the time of his death only about one-third of the work, as far as the end of the letter D, was ready for the press. Chancellor Christie remarked that "Chalmers's own articles, though not without the merit which characterises a laborious compiler, are too long and tedious for the general reader, and show neither sufficient research nor sufficient accuracy to satisfy the student."
Dictionary of National Biography
After issuing a volume of errata in 1904, the dictionary was reissued with minor revisions in 22 volumes in 1908 and 1909; a subtitle said that it covered British history "from the earliest times to the year 1900". In the words of the "Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition", the dictionary had "proved of inestimable service in elucidating the private annals of the British", providing not only concise lives of the notable deceased, but additionally lists of sources which were invaluable to researchers in a period when few libraries or collections of manuscripts had published catalogues or indices, and the production of indices to periodical literatures was just beginning. Throughout the twentieth century, further volumes were published for those who had died, generally on a decade-by-decade basis, beginning in 1912 with a supplement edited by Lee covering those who died between 1901 and 1911. The dictionary was transferred from its original publishers, Smith, Elder & Co., to Oxford University Press in 1917. Until 1996, Oxford University Press continued to add further supplements featuring articles on subjects who had died during the twentieth century.
Oxford English Dictionary
Accordingly, it was recognized that work on a third edition would have to begin to rectify these problems. The first attempt to produce a new edition came with the "Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series," a new set of supplements to complement the "OED2" with the intention of producing a third edition from them. The previous supplements appeared in alphabetical installments, whereas the new series had a full A–Z range of entries within each individual volume, with a complete alphabetical index at the end of all words revised so far, each listed with the volume number which contained the revised entry.
Oxford English Dictionary
The "Oxford English Dictionary 2" was printed in 20 volumes. For the first time, there was no attempt to start them on letter boundaries, and they were made roughly equal in size. The 20 volumes started with "A", "B.B.C.", "Cham", "Creel", "Dvandva", "Follow", "Hat", "Interval", "Look", "Moul", "Ow", "Poise", "Quemadero", "Rob", "Ser", "Soot", "Su", "Thru", "Unemancipated", and "Wave".
Oxford Dictionary of English
The Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) is a single-volume English dictionary published by Oxford University Press, first published in 1998 as The New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE). The word "new" was dropped from the title with the Second Edition in 2003. This dictionary is not based on the "Oxford English Dictionary" and should not be mistaken for a new or updated version of the OED. It is a completely new dictionary which strives to represent as faithfully as possible the current usage of English words.
Ornithological Dictionary
The first edition appeared in 1802. It had page numbers in the introduction (to page xlii (42 pages) but not in the main text (655 pages). It was printed in two volumes for J. White of Fleet Street, London by T. Bensley of Bolt Court, London.
Oxford English Dictionary
By 1989, the "NOED" project had achieved its primary goals, and the editors, working online, had successfully combined the original text, Burchfield's supplement, and a small amount of newer material, into a single unified dictionary. The word "new" was again dropped from the name, and the second edition of the "OED," or the "OED2," was published. The first edition retronymically became the "OED1".
Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques
The first fascicule (from entry "Aachs") was published in 1912 and the publication follows regularly year after year. In 2015 this encyclopedia arrived at fascicule 185 (containing entries from "Leyen" to "Licayrac"). The whole work is published also in volumes, and up to 2015 the volumes published are 31 (up to entry "Licayrac"). The two subsequent fasciscules are, unlike earlier fasciscules, selective in content.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History
In summarizing its contents, Oxford University Press states that:In January 2008, the American Library Association at its annual meeting in Philadelphia announced that it would award its Dartmouth Medal to the "Encyclopedia". The ALA news release explained:
Of all the titles the Dartmouth Medal Committee considered for this year's award, one left the others in its wake. You might say it floated to the top, or that it swam past the competition. "The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History" is the first English-language scholarly reference log of its kind. Its four volumes hold a cargo of nearly one thousand signed entries and four hundred illustrations. One can scarcely fathom the depths of its contents. It contains all the seafaring topics you may expect "Shipwrecks," "Navigators," and "Ballast" and many you may not "Film," "Terrorism," and "Religion." Not only did the international crew of naval, academic, and independent authors admirably achieve their goal of creating an interdisciplinary resource, they also made it fun. This title is destined to be the flagship resource in maritime history for years to come.
Oxford English Dictionary
Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) played the key role in the project's first months, but his Church of England appointment as Dean of Westminster meant that he could not give the dictionary project the time that it required. He withdrew and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor.
A Dictionary of the English Language
The first was the 1755 "Folio" edition, which came in two large volumes on 4 April. The folio edition also features full literary quotes by those authors that Johnson quoted, such as Dryden and Shakespeare. It was followed a few weeks later by a second edition published in 165 weekly parts. The third edition was published in 1765, but it was the fourth, which came out in 1773 which included significant revisions by Johnson of the original work.
Oxford English Dictionary
In 1998 the "New Oxford Dictionary of English" ("NODE") was published. While also aiming to cover current English, "NODE" was not based on the "OED". Instead, it was an entirely new dictionary produced with the aid of corpus linguistics. Once "NODE" was published, a similarly brand-new edition of the "Concise Oxford Dictionary" followed, this time based on an abridgement of "NODE" rather than the "OED"; "NODE" (under the new title of the "Oxford Dictionary of English", or "ODE") continues to be principal source for Oxford's product line of current-English dictionaries, including the "New Oxford American Dictionary", with the "OED" now only serving as the basis for scholarly historical dictionaries.
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
On 21 September 2007, the Sixth Edition appeared. The dictionary now includes 600,000 words, phrases, and definitions, covering global English-speaking regions and 2500 new words and meanings from Oxford Dictionaries and Oxford English Corpus. As previously, the vocabulary includes entries in general English from 1700 to the present day and in earlier major literary works. The dictionary includes 80,000 quotations illustrating the use of words, thousands of newly discovered antedatings based on the continuing research for the OED, 2,500 new words and senses, thousands of antedatings of existing words from Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford English Corpus, many new quotations from recent authors, and a complete review of spelling forms and defining vocabulary.
Grove Art Online
"The Dictionary of Art" was first offered online on 12 November 1998 by Grove Dictionaries (New York) under the title "The Grove Dictionary of Art Online". The online version is now published by Oxford University Press, is updated three times a year, is available by subscription and includes some extra content. In the UK, many public libraries offer it free to their online users using their library membership number and a PIN to log in. An umbrella site, Oxford Art Online, also includes the "Benezit Dictionary of Artists" and other art reference works: "The Oxford Companion to Western Art", the "Encyclopedia of Aesthetics", and "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms".
Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (often abbreviated to ODB) is a three-volume historical dictionary published by the English Oxford University Press. With more than 5,000 entries, it contains comprehensive information in English on topics relating to the Byzantine Empire. It was edited by Alexander Kazhdan, and was first published in 1991. Kazhdan was a professor at Princeton University who became a Senior Research Associate at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC before his death. He contributed to many of the articles in the Dictionary and always signed his initials "A.K." at the end of the article to indicate his contribution.
The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language
A revised and expanded edition by Charles Annandale was published in 1882 at London in four volumes, over 3,000 pages, with about 130,000 entries, revised definitions and etymologies, and 3,000 illustrations. Although the vocabulary coverage was small by today's standards, it was the largest English dictionary at the time. This edition went through numerous printings in various forms well into the twentieth century.
William Camden
Camden's "Remaines" is often the earliest or sole usage cited for a word in the "Oxford English Dictionary"; and further significant early usages (including new words and antedatings) have since been identified. "Remaines" also contains the first-ever alphabetical list of English proverbs, since heavily exploited by the editors of the principal modern dictionaries of proverbs (including those of Burton Stevenson (1949), M. P. Tilley (1950) and the third edition of the "Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs", edited by F. P. Wilson (1970)). Scattered through the book are a number of additional proverbs not recorded elsewhere.
Hanyu Da Cidian
The Hanyu Da Cidian () is the most inclusive available Chinese dictionary. Lexicographically comparable to the "Oxford English Dictionary", it has diachronic coverage of the Chinese language, and traces usage over three millennia from Chinese classic texts to modern slang. The chief editor Luo Zhufeng () (1911–1996), along with a team of over 300 scholars and lexicographers, started the enormous task of compilation in 1979. Publication of the thirteen volumes began with first volume in 1986 and ended with the appendix and index volume in 1994.
Chambers Harrap
Between 1859 and 1868 they published their most important work to date, the renowned Chambers's Encyclopaedia (no longer published) in 520 weekly parts at three-halfpence each. The first edition was based on a translation into English of the 10th edition of the German-language "Konversations-Lexikon", which became the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. This went through several further editions, reaching a high point of quality with the 1950 edition published in 15 volumes by George Newnes which took six years to prepare, cost £500,000 and included the work of over 2,300 authors. The work was lauded by the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Jowitt, as "outstanding proof" of British scholarship, while the managing editor, M. D. Law, commented that she believed the work to be the first major encyclopaedia to be published in Britain since before the First World War. The encyclopaedia was regarded as such a scholarly achievement that Law received the O.B.E. for her efforts.
Charles Talbut Onions
James Murray invited Onions to join the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary at Oxford in 1895, and in 1914 he began independent editorial work with his own assistants. His "Shakespeare Glossary" was published in 1911; he co-edited "Shakespeare's England: an account of the life and manners of his age" (2 volumes; 1916) and, in 1933, he co-edited the OED Supplement with William Craigie. Following the death of William Little in 1922, he assumed the editorship of the "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary".
Samuel Johnson
Johnson's dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique. It was, however, the most commonly used and imitated for the 150 years between its first publication and the completion of the "Oxford English Dictionary" in 1928. Other dictionaries, such as Nathan Bailey's "Dictionarium Britannicum", included more words, and in the 150 years preceding Johnson's dictionary about twenty other general-purpose monolingual "English" dictionaries had been produced. However, there was open dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period. In 1741, David Hume claimed: "The Elegance and Propriety of Stile have been very much neglected among us. We have no Dictionary of our Language, and scarce a tolerable Grammar." Johnson's "Dictionary" offers insights into the 18th century and "a faithful record of the language people used". It is more than a reference book; it is a work of literature.
New Oxford American Dictionary
Oxford University Press published "NOAD2" in electronic form in 2006 at the OxfordAmericanDictionary.com, and in 2010, along with the "Oxford Dictionary of English", as part of Oxford Dictionaries Online.
Oxford Companions
Oxford Companions is a book series published by Oxford University Press, providing general knowledge within a specific area. The first book published in the series was "The Oxford Companion to English Literature" (1932), compiled by the retired diplomat Sir Paul Harvey.
Webster's Dictionary
In 1841, 82-year-old Noah Webster published a second edition of his lexicographical masterpiece with the help of his son, William G. Webster. Its title page does not claim the status of second edition, merely noting that this new edition was the "first edition in octavo" in contrast to the quarto format of the first edition of 1828. Again in two volumes, the title page proclaimed that the "Dictionary" contained "the whole vocabulary of the quarto, with corrections, improvements and several thousand additional words: to which is prefixed an introductory dissertation on the origin, history and connection of the languages of western Asia and Europe, with an explanation of the principles on which languages are formed. B. L. Hamlen of New Haven, Connecticut, prepared the 1841 printing of the second edition.
New Oxford American Dictionary
"NOAD" is based upon the "New Oxford Dictionary of English" ("NODE"), published in the United Kingdom in 1998, although with substantial editing, additional entries, and the inclusion of illustrations. It is based on a corpus linguistics analysis of Oxford's 200 million word database of contemporary American English.
Oxford English Dictionary
On 12 May 1860, Coleridge's dictionary plan was published and research was started. His house was the first editorial office. He arrayed 100,000 quotation slips in a 54 pigeon-hole grid. In April 1861, the group published the first sample pages; later that month, Coleridge died of tuberculosis, aged 30.
Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English is a one-volume dictionary published by Oxford University Press. It is intended for a family or upper secondary school readerships. The third edition (revised), published in 2008, has 1,264 pages, somewhat smaller than the "Concise Oxford English Dictionary", and is distinct from the "Compact" (single- and two-volume photo-reduced) editions of the multi-volume "Oxford English Dictionary".
Chinese encyclopedia
Among printed encyclopedias, the earliest was the (1917) "The Encyclopaedia Sinica" compiled the English missionary Samuel Couling. The 1938 "Cihai" ("Sea of Words") is a general-purpose encyclopedic dictionary that covers many fields of knowledge. The Zhonghua Book Company published the first edition, and the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House issued revised editions in 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009, making the "Cihai" a standard reference work for generations. The 1980-1993 "Zhongguo Da Baike Quanshu" or "Encyclopedia of China" is the first comprehensive (74 volume) Chinese encyclopedia. Compilation began in 1978, and the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House published individual volumes from 1980 through 1993. There is a 2009 concise second edition, as well as CD-ROM and online versions. The (1981–83) "Zhonghua Baike Quanshu" or "Chinese Encyclopedia" is a 10-volume comprehensive reference work published by the Chinese Culture University in Taiwan. An online version is also available. The 1985–91 Chinese-language edition "Concise Encyclopædia Britannica" or "Jianming Buliedian Baike Quanshu" is an 11-volume translation based on the Micropædia portion of the 1987 15th edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica".
Deutsches Wörterbuch
The "Deutsches Wörterbuch" was begun by the Brothers Grimm in 1838 and the initial volumes were published in 1854. Unfinished at the time of their deaths, the dictionary was finally completed by a succession of later scholars and institutions in 1961. In 1971, a 33rd supplement volume was published containing 25,000 additional entries. New research projects began in 2004 to expand and update the oldest parts of the dictionary to modern academic standards. Volumes A–F were planned for completion in 2012 by the Language Research Centre at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the University of Göttingen.
Oxford English Dictionary
Between 1928 and 1933, enough additional material had been compiled to make a one-volume supplement, so the dictionary was reissued as the set of 12 volumes and a one-volume supplement in 1933.
Oxford Dictionary of English
It is currently the largest single-volume English-language dictionary published by Oxford University Press.
Concise Oxford English Dictionary
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (officially titled The Concise Oxford Dictionary until 2002, and widely abbreviated COD or COED) is probably the best-known of the 'smaller' Oxford dictionaries. The latest edition of the "Concise Oxford English Dictionary" contains over 240,000 entries and 1,728 pages (concise only compared to the "OED" at over 21,000 pages). Its 12th edition, published in 2011, is used by both the United Nations and NATO as the current authority for spellings in documents written in English for international use. It is available as an e-book for a variety of handheld device platforms. In addition to providing information for general use, it documents local variations such as United States and United Kingdom usage.
Dictionary
Johnson's dictionary remained the English-language standard for over 150 years, until the Oxford University Press began writing and releasing the "Oxford English Dictionary" in short fascicles from 1884 onwards. It took nearly 50 years to complete this huge work, and they finally released the complete "OED" in twelve volumes in 1928. It remains the most comprehensive and trusted English language dictionary to this day, with revisions and updates added by a dedicated team every three months. One of the main contributors to this modern dictionary was an ex-army surgeon, William Chester Minor, a convicted murderer who was confined to an asylum for the criminally insane.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources
In 1913, Robert Whitwell, a prolific contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, petitioned the British Academy to use the imminent International Congress of Historical Studies to propose a replacement for the standard dictionary of medieval Latin, Du Cange's "Glossarium" (1678). Whitwell's idea was taken up in 1920 by the new International Union of Academies, which decided in 1924 that member academies should produce dictionaries based on those medieval Latin texts produced in geographic areas corresponding to their respective present-day territories, whilst also furnishing the material for an international "Novum Glossarium". To this end, the British Academy appointed two committees to direct the collection of quotations, one covering the sixth to eleventh centuries for the "Novum Glossarium" and the other covering 1066 to 1600 for a dictionary of "late medieval British Latin".
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources
The DMLBS was published in printed fascicules, from 1975 to 2013, by Oxford University Press:A binding case for the first five fascicules was supplied with Fascicule V, forming a first volume (A–L). However, no further binding cases were issued.
Comparison of English dictionaries
The 2nd Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) includes more historical entries because it also lists words that have been obsolete for centuries (back to the 7th century) due to changes in meaning and orthography. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary only covers usage back to the 18th century.
An Universal, Historical, Geographical, Chronological and Poetical Dictionary
An universal, historical, geographical, chronological and poetical dictionary, published in early 1703 was the first English language reference work to present general information in an alphabetical format. However, the work was considered inferior in quality to another work, the "Lexicon Technicum", which came out a few months later the same year and is considered the first "true" English language encyclopedia.
Oxford Dictionary of English
The first editor, Judy Pearsall, wrote in the introduction that it is based on a modern understanding of language and is derived from a corpus of contemporary English usage. For example, the editors did not discourage split infinitives, but instead justified their use in some contexts. The first edition was based on bodies of texts such as the British National Corpus and the citation database of the Oxford Reading Programme.
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
The New SOED was prepared under the editorship of Lesley Brown 1980-1993 and was the first complete revision of the dictionary and should be considered a re-abridgement of the SOED and its supplements. The whole text was completely revised for the Fourth Edition, which was published in 1993 as the "New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary". The book attempted to include all English words which had substantial currency after 1700, plus the vocabulary of Shakespeare, John Milton, Edmund Spenser and the King James Version. As a historical dictionary, it includes obsolete words if they are used by major authors and earlier meanings where they explain the development of a word. Headwords are traced back to their earliest usage. Includes 97,600 headwords, 25,250 variant spellings, 500,000 definitions, 87,400 illustrative quotations and 7,333 sources of quotations (including 5,519 individual authors).
Oxford American Dictionary
The work was based on the "Oxford Paperback Dictionary", published in 1979. It is no longer in print and has been superseded by the "New Oxford American Dictionary".
Dictionary of Scientific Biography
The first volume of the "Dictionary" was first put out in 1970, under the general editorship of Charles Coulston Gillispie. The set was completed in 1980. The "Dictionary" was published under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies by Charles Scribner's Sons in 16 volumes. Volume 15 is Supplement I; it contains additional biographies as well as topical essays on non-Western scientific traditions. Volume 16 is the general index. A 2-volume Supplement II with additional biographies was published in 1990.
Dictionary of American Biography
The Dictionary of American Biography was published in New York City by Charles Scribner's Sons under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The dictionary was first proposed to the Council in 1920 by historian Frederick Jackson Turner. The first edition was published in 20 volumes from 1928 to 1936, appearing at a rate of two or three volumes per year. These 20 volumes contained 15,000 biographies. In 1946, the 20 volumes were released as a ten-volume set, with each of the ten volumes divided into two parts (Part 1 and Part 2) corresponding to two volumes of the first edition combined into one, the page numbering of the first edition being retained.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
The original dictionary was published as a three-volume set in 1863, in London and Boston, USA. This was followed by "A Concise Dictionary of the Bible" (1865), intended for the general reader and students, and "A Smaller Dictionary of the Bible" (1866), for use in schools. "A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Bible" (1868), was published simultaneously in London and New York, and a four-volume "Dictionary of the Bible" (1871), was published in Boston, amongst other things incorporating the appendices of the first edition into the main body of the text.
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press. It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world. The second edition, comprising 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, was published in 1989.
A Dictionary of the English Language
Johnson's dictionary was not the first English dictionary, nor even among the first dozen. Over the previous 150 years more than twenty dictionaries had been published in England, the oldest of these being a Latin-English "wordbook" by Sir Thomas Elyot published in 1538.
Oxford English Dictionary
During the 1870s, the Philological Society was concerned with the process of publishing a dictionary with such an immense scope. They had pages printed by publishers, but no publication agreement was reached; both the Cambridge University Press and the Oxford University Press were approached. The OUP finally agreed in 1879 (after two years of negotiating by Sweet, Furnivall, and Murray) to publish the dictionary and to pay Murray, who was both the editor and the Philological Society president. The dictionary was to be published as interval fascicles, with the final form in four volumes, totalling 6,400 pages. They hoped to finish the project in ten years.
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) is an English language dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. The SOED is a two-volume abridgement of the twenty-volume "Oxford English Dictionary" ("OED").
Oxford University Press
The first printer associated with Oxford University was Theoderic Rood. A business associate of William Caxton, Rood seems to have brought his own wooden printing press to Oxford from Cologne as a speculative venture, and to have worked in the city between around 1480 and 1483. The first book printed in Oxford, in 1478, an edition of Rufinus's "Expositio in symbolum apostolorum", was printed by another, anonymous, printer. Famously, this was mis-dated in Roman numerals as "1468", thus apparently pre-dating Caxton. Rood's printing included John Ankywyll's "Compendium totius grammaticae," which set new standards for teaching of Latin grammar.
Vernacular
By 1858, the need for an update resulted in the first planning for a new comprehensive dictionary to document standard English, a term coined at that time by the planning committee. The dictionary, known as the "Oxford English Dictionary", published its first fascicle in 1884. It attracted significant contributions from some singular minds, such as William Chester Minor, a former army surgeon who had become criminally insane and made most of his contributions while incarcerated. Whether the OED is the long-desired standard English Dictionary is debatable, but its authority is taken seriously by the entire English-speaking world. Its staff is currently working on a third edition.
A Dictionary of the English Language
Published on 4 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.
Oxford Dictionary of Saints
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints by David Hugh Farmer is a concise reference compilation of information on more than 1300 saints and contains over 1700 entries. It is published by Oxford University Press. The first edition was published in 1978. A fifth revised edition was published in 2011.
The Australian National Dictionary
Work on the Australian National Dictionary Project was undertaken from the late 1970s by W.S. (Bill) Ramson (1933–2011) at the Australian National University. Ramson was motivated by a lack of lexicographic work on Australian English on historical principles, in the tradition of the "Oxford English Dictionary". The project gained funding from Oxford University Press and the first edition of the "Australian National Dictionary" was published by Oxford in 1988, coinciding with the bicentenary of Australia's settlement. It was the first comprehensive, historically based record of the words and phrases that make up the Australian contribution to the English language. It records the historical development of Australian words, phrases and meanings from their earliest use to the present day, providing evidence of this history in dated and referenced quotations drawn from over 9,000 Australian sources. The trials and tribulations of this process are outlined in Ramson's book "Lexical Images" (OUP, 2005). The first edition of the dictionary is available online.
Historical dictionary
Throughout the later nineteenth century numerous historical dictionary projects were started for the various languages of Europe. The main historical dictionary of English, the "Oxford English Dictionary", was initiated in 1857 and was completed in 1928.
New Catholic Encyclopedia
The original "Catholic Encyclopedia" was published between 1907 and 1914, first by the Robert Appleton Company, which was specifically created for that purpose, and then by its successor The Encyclopedic Press Inc. Supplements to the "Catholic Encyclopedia" were published in 1922 and in 1958. In 1960, the Catholic University of America, in collaboration with the McGraw-Hill Book Company, began work on what was planned as an entirely new encyclopedia, and seven years later (in 1967) published the 15-volume "New Catholic Encyclopedia" ("NCE1"). Alphabetic supplemental volumes appeared in 1974, 1979, 1989, and 1996.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
The Oxford Companion to English Literature first published in 1932, edited by the retired diplomat Sir Paul Harvey (1869–1948), was the earliest of the Oxford Companions to appear. It is currently in its seventh edition (2009), edited by Dinah Birch. The work, which has been periodically updated, includes biographies of prominent historical and leading contemporary writers in the English language, entries on major works, "allusions which may be encountered", significant (serial) publications and literary clubs. Writers in other languages are included when they have affected the anglophone world. The "Companion" achieved "classic status" with the expanded fifth edition edited by novelist and scholar Margaret Drabble, and the book was often referred to as "The Drabble".
A Dictionary of the Chinese Language
A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts or Morrison's Chinese dictionary (1815-1823), compiled by the Anglo-Scottish missionary Robert Morrison was the first Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary. Part I is Chinese-English arranged by the 214 Kangxi radicals, Part II is Chinese-English arranged alphabetically, and Part III is English-Chinese also arranged alphabetically. This groundbreaking reference work is enormous, comprising 4,595 pages in 6 quarto volumes and including 47,035 head characters taken from the 1716 "Kangxi Dictionary". However, Morrison's encyclopedic dictionary had flaws, notably failing to distinguish aspirated consonants: the pronunciation "taou" is given for both aspirated "táo" (桃, "peach") and unaspirated "dào" (道, "way; the Tao").
Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
On 22 October 2009, after 44 years of work, version 1.0 was published as a two-volume set as "HTOED". It consists of two slipcased hardcover volumes, totaling nearly 4,000 pages. The "HTE", released as version 4.2 in September 2014, is freely available online from the University of Glasgow.
Oxford English Dictionary
Beginning with the launch of the first "OED Online" site in 2000, the editors of the dictionary began a major revision project to create a completely revised third edition of the dictionary ("OED3"), expected to be completed in 2037 at a projected cost of about £34 million.
The Oxford History of Western Music
The "Oxford History of Music" was first published in six volumes under the general editorship of Sir Henry Hadow between 1901 and 1905. The first two volumes, written by H. E. Woolridge, were entitled "The Polyphonic Period", and began with the music of ancient Greece: these volumes dated quite quickly. Other volumes were reprinted as they stood, but Sir Percy Buck , who was also involved with the OUP's "Tudor Church Music", revised the first two volumes (1929 and 1932), and edited a new introductory volume (1929). The introductory volume included a contribution from Sylvia Townsend Warner.
OxfordDictionaries.com
OxfordDictionaries.com, originally titled Oxford Dictionaries Online ("ODO") and rebranded Oxford Living Dictionaries in 2017, is an online dictionary produced by the Oxford University Press (OUP) publishing house, a department of the University of Oxford, which also publishes a number of print dictionaries, among other works. The database includes the contents of "Oxford Dictionary of English", "New Oxford American Dictionary", "Oxford Thesaurus of English", and "Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus", and the website also provides English grammar and usage resources. The database provides both "world" and American English as separate lexicons; while most entries are the same, some significantly differ to reflect distinctions in usage. This online edition of Oxford's dictionary resources includes exclusive updates (mostly neologisms); it is updated every three months. The site also includes several dictionaries of foreign language terms to and from English. It does not include the full text of the "Oxford English Dictionary".
A Latin Dictionary
From the time of its publication, many scholars have criticized the dictionary for its errors and inconsistencies. Because of various circumstances, however, no replacement was attempted until 1933, with the "Oxford Latin Dictionary", which was completed in 1983.
Vulgate
To make a text available representative of the earliest copies of the Vulgate and summarize the most common variants between the various manuscripts, Anglican scholars at the University of Oxford began to edit the New Testament in 1878 (completed in 1954), while the Benedictines of Rome began an edition of the Old Testament in 1907 (completed in 1995). Their findings were condensed into an edition of both the Old and New Testaments first published at Stuttgart in 1969, created with the participation of members from both projects. These books are the standard editions of the Vulgate used by scholars. From the original Oxford Vulgate, the editors of these critical editions adopted two major critical principles; firstly to present the text in sense lines "per cola et commata", with no other indications of punctuation; and secondly, to reconstruct the earliest text solely on the authority of primary manuscript witnesses dating from before the 11th century (a few later Bibles are selectively cited in the apparatus, but not used for the texts). Consequently, for the most part, the later medieval development of the Vulgate text is apparent in these critical editions only in citations of variants printed from the Sistine and Sixto-Clementine editions; albeit that these can only provide two snap-shots of the wide range of variant readings found in medieval texts. Neither in the Old or New Testaments, do the critical editions print conjectural readings (even in instances of manifest error or contamination, such as pietatis for timoris Domini at Isaiah 11:2);" every reading is taken from one or another of the primary witnesses for that book.
Dictionary
The first edition of "A Greek-English Lexicon" by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott appeared in 1843; this work remained the basic dictionary of Greek until the end of the 20th century. And in 1858 was published the first volume of the Deutsches Wörterbuch by the Brothers Grimm; the work was completed in 1961. Between 1861 and 1874 was published the "Dizionario della lingua italiana" by Niccolò Tommaseo. Between 1862 and 1874 was published the six volumes of "A magyar nyelv szótára" (Dictionary of Hungarian Language) by Gergely Czuczor and János Fogarasi. Émile Littré published the Dictionnaire de la langue française between 1863 and 1872. In the same year 1863 appeared the first volume of the "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal" which was completed in 1998. Also in 1863 Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl published the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language". The Duden dictionary dates back to 1880, and is currently the prescriptive source for the spelling of German. The decision to start work on the "Svenska Akademiens ordbok" was taken in 1787.
Table Alphabeticall
The first edition listed 2,543 headwords. The dictionary increased in size with every succeeding edition, until the fourth edition in 1617 defined 3,264 words. The only surviving copy is found at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
User-generated content
It should be remembered that the massive, multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary was exclusively written by user generated content. In 1857, Richard Chenevix Trench of the London Philological Society sought public contributions from throughout the English-speaking world for the creation of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. As Simon Winchester recounts:
History of the Encyclopædia Britannica
The renowned eleventh edition of "Encyclopædia Britannica" was begun in 1903, and published in 1910–1911 in 28 volumes, with a one-volume Index. Edited by Hugh Chisholm in London and by Franklin Henry Hooper in New York, the 11th edition was the first to be published substantially at one time, instead of volume by volume. Its illustrious contributors are legion, including Baden Baden-Powell writing on kite-flying; Arthur Eddington on astronomy; Edmund Gosse on literature and Donald Tovey on music. Sometimes called the 1911 "Encyclopædia Britannica", this edition is still highly regarded for its lucid explanations of scholarly subjects. Being in the public domain, the complete text is freely available online. The 11th edition retained the high scholarship and eminent contributors that marked the 9th edition, but tempered that scholarship with shorter, simpler articles that were more intelligible to lay-readers. Thus, the 9th and 11th editions had 17,000 and 40,000 articles, respectively, although they were roughly equivalent in size. This shift accommodated the American business strategy of popularizing the "Britannica" for a mass market, while still retaining its quality as a reference work. The high literary and scholarly level of the 11th edition is largely due to the zeal of its owner, Horace Everett Hooper, who held scholarship in high regard and spared no expense to make the 11th edition as excellent as possible.
Early English dictionaries
Before Samuel Johnson's two-volume "A Dictionary of the English Language", published in 1755 and considered the most authoritative and influential work of early English lexicography, there were other early English dictionaries: more than a dozen had been published during the preceding 150 years. This article lists the most significant ones.
Oxford University Press
Offered to Oxford by James Murray and the Philological Society, the "New English Dictionary" was a grand academic and patriotic undertaking. Lengthy negotiations led to a formal contract. Murray was to edit a work estimated to take 10 years and to cost approximately £9,000. Both figures were wildly optimistic. The Dictionary began to appear in print in 1884, but the first edition was not completed until 1928, 13 years after Murray's death, at a cost of around £375,000. This vast financial burden and its implications landed on Price's successors.
Oxford English Dictionary
In 1991, for the 20-volume "OED2" (1989), the compact edition format was re-sized to one-third of original linear dimensions, a nine-up ("9-up") format requiring greater magnification, but allowing publication of a single-volume dictionary. It was accompanied by a magnifying glass as before and "A User's Guide to the "Oxford English Dictionary"", by Donna Lee Berg. After these volumes were published, though, book club offers commonly continued to sell the two-volume 1971 "Compact Edition".
A Dictionary of First Names
A Dictionary of First Names is an onomastic work of reference on given names, published by Oxford University Press, edited by Patrick Hanks, Kate Hardcastle, and Flavia Hodges in 1990 and 2006.
The second edition of 2006 (as paperback 2007) discusses a total of "over 6,000 names".
An abbreviated version, "A Concise Dictionary of First Names" was published by Oxford Paperback Reference in 1992, and an even more concise "Oxford minireference" version entitled "Babies' Names" in 1995.
An online version is available to paying subscribers at oxfordreference.com.
Dictionary of American English
A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles (DAE) is a dictionary of terms appearing in English in the United States that was published in four volumes from 1938 to 1944 by the University of Chicago Press. Intended to pick up where the "Oxford English Dictionary" left off, it covers American English words and phrases in use from the first English settlements up to the start of the 20th century.
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
A Second Edition appeared in 1936 contained about 3,000 revisions and additions and was reprinted in 1939.
Oxford Dictionary of English
The Revised Second Edition contains 355,000 words, phrases, and definitions, including biographical references and thousands of encyclopaedic entries. The Third Edition was published in August 2010, with some new words, including "vuvuzela".
The New World of English Words
The New World of English Words, or, a General Dictionary is a dictionary compiled by Edward Phillips and first published in London in 1658. It was the first folio English dictionary.
Encyclopædia Perthensis
The "Encyclopædia" was issued in weekly installments from 1796 to 1806, then republished in a 23 volume set in 1806. The first edition had the subtitle "Universal dictionary of knowledge, collected from every source and intended to supersede the use of all other English books of reference."
Amos Sutton
He published the first volume of his Odia dictionary in 1841, and the next two volumes by 1843. It was printed in the Odisha mission press at Cuttack. The Odia dictionary gives Odia meaning of Odia words with English synonyms. Sutton also prepared a dictionary named "Sadhu Bhasharthabhidhan", a vocabulary of current Sanskrit terms with Odia definitions which was also printed in Odisha mission press in 1844.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History, John B. Hattendorf, editor in chief, was published by Oxford University Press in 2007. The work was issued in four volumes in print and online in the Oxford Digital Library. The encyclopedia is devoted to global maritime history and contains some 1.6 million words in more than 950 articles written by more than 400 authors in nearly 50 different countries.
A Chinese–English Dictionary
A Chinese–English Dictionary (1892), compiled by the British consular officer and sinologist Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), is the first Chinese–English encyclopedic dictionary. Giles started compilation after being rebuked for criticizing mistranslations in Samuel Wells Williams' (1874) "A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language". The 1,461-page first edition contains 13,848 Chinese character head entries alphabetically collated by Beijing Mandarin pronunciation romanized in the Wade–Giles system, which Giles created as a modification of Thomas Wade's (1867) system. Giles' dictionary furthermore gives pronunciations from nine regional varieties of Chinese, and three Sino-Xenic languages Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Giles revised his dictionary into the 1,813-page second edition (1912) with the addition of 67 entries and numerous usage examples.
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
A Third Edition was published in the United States under the name "The Oxford Universal Dictionary" in 1944 with reprints in 1947, 1950, 1952 and 1955. The 1955 reprint contained an addendum of new entries. The 1973 reprint, which contained an enlarged addenda with over seventy pages and a major revision of all the etymologies.
Century Dictionary
The first edition was published from 1889 to 1891 by The Century Company of New York, and was describe as being "six volumes in twenty four". In 1895 a 10 volume edition was published, with the first eight volumes containing the dictionary proper, and the last two containing a biographical dictionary and a world atlas. Editions in either the 10 or 8 volume format were published in 1899, 1901, 1902, 1903 and 1904. In 1901 the title and subtitle changed slightly from "The Century Dictionary; an encyclopedic lexicon of the English language" to "The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia; a work of universal reference in all departments of knowledge, with a new atlas of the world." Further editions were published in 1906, 1909 and 1911, this time in 12 volumes each.
Oxford University Press
The university became involved in the print trade around 1480, and grew into a major printer of Bibles, prayer books, and scholarly works. OUP took on the project that became the "Oxford English Dictionary" in the late 19th century, and expanded to meet the ever-rising costs of the work. As a result, the last hundred years has seen Oxford publish children's books, school text books, music, journals, the World's Classics series, and a range of English language teaching texts. Moves into international markets led to OUP opening its own offices outside the United Kingdom, beginning with New York City in 1896. With the advent of computer technology and increasingly harsh trading conditions, the Press's printing house at Oxford was closed in 1989, and its former paper mill at Wolvercote was demolished in 2004. By contracting out its printing and binding operations, the modern OUP publishes some 6,000 new titles around the world each year.
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
The Fifth Edition was published in 2002, and contains more than half a million definitions, with 83,500 illustrative quotations from 7,000 authors. The name Shorter Oxford English Dictionary was used to emphasise the link between this two-volume dictionary and the original twenty-volume OED.
The Oxford Book of English Verse
The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900 is an anthology of English poetry, edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch, that had a very substantial influence on popular taste and perception of poetry for at least a generation. It was published by Oxford University Press in 1900; in its india-paper form it was carried widely around the British Empire and in war as a 'knapsack book'. It sold close to 500,000 copies in its first edition. In 1939, the editor revised it, deleting several poems (especially from the late 19th century) that he regretted including and adding instead many poems published before 1901 as well as poems published up to 1918. The second edition is now available online.
Oxford English Dictionary
Furnivall believed that, since many printed texts from earlier centuries were not readily available, it would be impossible for volunteers to efficiently locate the quotations that the dictionary needed. As a result, he founded the Early English Text Society in 1864 and the Chaucer Society in 1868 to publish old manuscripts. Furnivall's preparatory efforts lasted 21 years and provided numerous texts for the use and enjoyment of the general public, as well as crucial sources for lexicographers, but they did not actually involve compiling a dictionary. Furnivall recruited more than 800 volunteers to read these texts and record quotations. While enthusiastic, the volunteers were not well trained and often made inconsistent and arbitrary selections. Ultimately, Furnivall handed over nearly two tons of quotation slips and other materials to his successor.
Oxford County, Ontario
Attempts to record the history of Oxford County were few and far between during the first century of European settlement and growth. Thomas S. Shenston (1822-1895), the Oxford County commissioner for the provincial census of 1851, authored "The Oxford gazetteer; containing a complete history of the county of Oxford, from its first settlement..." in 1852, but in footnotes to several portions of the text he indicates that the historical narrative he had compiled was forced out of the book by the amount of census data tabulated in its pages. Despite its shortcomings, the book was reprinted by the county as a Canada Centennial project in 1967. When the mania for illustrated county atlases swept across Ontario in the 1870s, Oxford was included, but the volume published by Walker and Miles of Toronto in 1876 devoted only five pages to a summary of the county's history. Oxford was not included in the mania which created county history volumes in the 1880s and 1890s, but the Oxford Historical and Museum Society was established in 1897, and a great leap forward took place in 1948 when it partnered with the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Western Ontario to create the first of what the Ontario government planned as a network of county museums to aid local schools in teaching students about their history. Since then, the Oxford Historical Society has published a series of booklets as history bulletins and a quarterly newsletter, and also ensures that more recent books by local historians are kept in print and available for purchase.
Oxford English Dictionary
The supplements and their integration into the second edition were a great improvement to the "OED" as a whole, but it was recognized that most of the entries were still fundamentally unaltered from the first edition. Much of the information in the dictionary published in 1989 was already decades out of date, though the supplements had made good progress towards incorporating new vocabulary. Yet many definitions contained disproven scientific theories, outdated historical information, and moral values that were no longer widely accepted. Furthermore, the supplements had failed to recognize many words in the existing volumes as obsolete by the time of the second edition's publication, meaning that thousands of words were marked as current despite no recent evidence of their use.
Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions is a reference work edited by John Bowker and published by Oxford University Press in the year 1997. It contains over 8,200 entries by leading authorities in the field of religious studies containing a topic index of 13,000 headings. There are over 80 contributors from 13 countries.
Meanderings of Memory
The OED is a comprehensive multi-volume historical dictionary, whose first edition was published in installments called fascicles between 1884 and 1928. The definition of every sense of every headword entry is accompanied by quotations, listed chronologically, from cited sources, to illustrate when and how the word was used.
Dictionary of Old English
The dictionary was conceived in 1968 as a replacement for the Bosworth–Toller "Anglo-Saxon Dictionary", which had been compiled at a time when both the study of the Old English language and lexicographical techniques were less advanced. From the outset, the editors were interested in the potential application of computer technology to the task of compiling the dictionary, and in basing the dictionary text on a corpus. A dictionary plan was published in 1973. It was originally anticipated that work on the dictionary would begin in 1976 and the dictionary would begin appearing in fascicles shortly thereafter.