Tag Archives: OED

Published: Antedating (in) the OED

Out recently in Notes & Queries is a short article by me on antedating rates in the OED since revision started in 2000:Antedating (in) the Oxford English Dictionary The article is OA, and linked in .pdf above. It’s short, and the point is pretty straightforward. I’ll pull out the graphs here for your viewing pleasure. See […]

The New-Look OED: The End of the Entry

The new-look OED Online tosses a lot that was great, and unique, and real, about OED, while offering little new of value.

Published: Women’s Words in the OED

Now published in Review of English Studies (Advance Access), an article by me on the ways in which the Oxford English Dictionary has treated texts authored by women in its marshalling of citation evidence for English language lexis, from the first edition (1884-1928) to the current OED3 revision (2000-). The approach I take is driven […]

OED Work on “Writing and Editing” Podcast

I talked with Wayne Jones the other day about my work on the Oxford English Dictionary. The result was this short piece on my plans for an updated OED bibliography and Variorum: 182. Enhancing the Oxford English Dictionary

Money for a Variorum OED & OED Bibliography

Over the past many moons I’ve posted from time to time about my researches into the Oxford English Dictionary, and some of the interesting or puzzling or maddening or heartening things I’ve found there. A big theme lately has been the need for a Variorum, or track-changes, OED, which would allow researchers to compare the […]

Christmas Dinner

O, how I have complained over “DINNER” in the Oxford English Dictionary [see “Oxford English Dinner“]. The close of 2021 brought an early Christmas surprise: a new, fully revised entry. And it’s not just any revision, but one of those with an extended lexicological and sociohistorical note. The first main definition now says: 1. Originally: […]

Nae Mair for the Nonce?

Growlsome, guzzledom, panfrivolium – Oxford English Dictionary #OED doing away with “nonce-words” | Nae Mair for the Nonce? | The Life of Words

Why We Need a Variorum OED: “Transgender”

The need for a Variorum–i.e. a detailed revision history for every published element of the OED since 1884–is becoming even more acute.

Published: “Alien” vs. Editor: “World English” in the OED 1884-2020

This article discusses the changing ways in which the Oxford English Dictionary has recorded the vocabularies of ‘World English’ from the beginnings to the present day.

Seamus Heaney on Dictionaries

In the summer of 2012 Seamus Heaney wrote to me on some questions I had sent him about dictionaries and words and etymologies. Bits of what he had to say made it into a couple of talks I did around that time, but I recently rediscovered the original text, and thought it should see the […]