A Supplement To The Oxford English Dictionary H N

These volumes replace the 1933 Supplement to the OED. The vocabulary treated is that which came into use during the publication of the successive sections of the main Dictionary -- that is, between 1884, when the first fascicle of the letter A was published, and 1928, when the final section of the Dictionary appeared -- together with accessions to the English language in Britain and abroad from 1928 to the present day. Nearly all the material in the 1933 Supplement has been retained here, though in revised form (Preface).

Provides definitions of approximately 290,500 English words, arranged alphabetically in twenty volumes, with cross-references, etymologies, and pronunciation keys, and includes a bibliography.

Can you drink a glass of balderdash? What do you call the part of a dog's back it can't scratch? And if, serendipitously, you find yourself in Serendip, then where exactly are you? The answers to all of these questions -- and a great many more -- can be found in the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language. And there is no better guide to the dictionary's many wonderments than the former chief editor of the OED, John Simpson. Simpson spent almost four decades of his life immersed in the intricacies of our language, and guides us through its history with charmingly laconic wit. In The Word Detective, an intensely personal memoir and a joyful celebration of English, he weaves a story of how words come into being (and sometimes disappear), how culture shapes the language we use, and how technology has transformed not only the way we speak and write but also how words are made. Throughout, he enlivens his narrative with lively excavations and investigations of individual words -- from deadline to online and back to 101 (yes, it's a word) -- all the while reminding us that the seemingly mundane words (can you name the four different meanings of ma?) are often the most interesting ones. But Simpson also reminds us of the limitations of language: spending his days in the OED's house of words, his family at home is forced to confront the challenges of wordlessness. A brilliant and deeply humane expedition through the world of words, The Word Detective will delight and inspire any lover of language.

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: Good, University of Zurich (English Seminar), 10 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The history of dictionaries certainly goes back to the 8th century, when the custom of making collections of glosses grew up. These collections, called glossarium or glossary, were a great help to students, as they were also a sort of dictionary. In the 10th century, Abbot Ælfric produced a Latin grammar book, including a short Latin-English dictionary - the first of its kind. In 1440 Galfridus Grammaticus produced the first English-Latin dictionary which was printed in 1499 by Pynson and bore the title Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum. Until the 16th century, the emphasis of dictionaries lay on translating foreign words into English. Apparently, there was no need for an English-English dictionary, i.e. a dictionary which described English words to English people. In that time a lot of foreign words, mostly Latin ones, made their way into ‘standard’ English, which at first caused no debate but then was criticised by language purists. According to them English was in danger of being taken over by foreign languages and needed special support. This idea was the beginning of English-English dictionaries. In 1604 Robert Cawdry brought out his Table Alphabetical. About three thousand ‘hard’ words which had become common in English were listed and explained. Henry Cockeram produced the first work with the title The English Dictionary in 1623. Like other dictionaries of that time, it primarily dealt with ‘difficult’ English words. A polyglot dictionary of eleven languages was published in 1617 by John Minsheu. The Ductor in Linguas was the most monumental dictionary in the 17th century and for the first time, etymology was given some attention. In 1674 John Ray produced a dictionary which dealt with dialect words. It was an unexpected success and people all over the country began looking for additional local terms and sent them to Ray, who brought out a second and enlarged edition of this dictionary in 1691. John Ray can be regarded as the “remote originator of the English Dialect Society” (Mathews 1966, p. 26). Until then, dictionaries followed the line of old glossaries and only dealt with terms which were not common or rather unusual in the English language. This changed in the 18th century when the first attempts to publish dictionaries containing all English words were made. In 1702 John Kersey published A New English Dictionary; or, a complete collection of the most proper and significant words, commonly used in the language... [...]