Oxford English Dictionary

The Golden Age of English lexicography began in the last quarter of the 19th century when the English Philological Society started work on compiling The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which was originally named New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED). It is still referred to as either OED or NED.

The objective of this dictionary was and still is to trace the development of English words from their form in Old English. If the word was not found in Old English, it was shown when it was introduced into the language. For words and meanings which have become obsolete the date of the latest occurrence is provided. The dictionary includes spellings, pronunciations and detailed etymologies.

The completion of the work required more than 75 years. The first part of the dictionary appeared in 1884 and the last in 1928. Later it was issued in twelve volumes in order to hold new words a three volume Supplement was issued in 1933.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of current English was first published in 1911. It is not a historical dictionary but of current usage. A still shorter form is The Pocket Oxford Dictionary. The new enlarged version of OED was issued in 22 volumes 1994.

With descriptions for approximately 750,000 words, the Oxford English Dictionary is the world's most comprehensive single-language print dictionary according to the Guiness Book of World Records. Two Russian borrowings glasnost and perestroika were included in it. This publication was followed by a two- volume Supplement to hold new words.

J. Wright

English Dialect Dictionary

Another big dictionary is Joseph Wright's "English Dialect Dictionary". Before this dictionary could be started upon, a thorough study of English dialects had to be completed. The English Dialect Dictionary, being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years; founded on the publications of the English Dialect Society and on a large amount of material never before printed was published by Oxford University Press in 6 volumes between 1898 and 1905. Its compilation and printing was funded privately by Joseph Wright, a self-taught philologist at the University of Oxford.

Due to the scale of the work, 70,000 entries, and the period in which the information was gathered, it is regarded as a standard work in the historical study of dialect. Wright marked annotations and corrections in a cut-up and rebound copy of the first edition; this copy is among Wright's papers in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.

Дата добавления: 2015-08-21