Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

Alternate Titles: OED

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As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from dictionaries of contemporary English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You will still find these in the OED, but you will also find the history of individual words, and of the language traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals, to films scripts and cook books.

Historical Thesaurus of the OED is now fully incorporated into OED Online. Historical Thesaurus arranges the words by meaning, tracing the changing language of the material world, the mind and the society, from the Anglo-Saxon era to the modern day.

The OED is updated on a quarterly basis.

PE 1625 M7 1989 v.1-20 Koerner Reference

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English; Linguistics