The Oxford English Corpus

Oxford Dictionaries are continually monitoring and researching how language is evolving. The Oxford English Corpus is central to the process and to Oxford's £35 million research programme - the largest language research programme in the world.

The following pages provide detailed information on the Oxford English Corpus, how the corpus has been created and how we make use of it to make Oxford dictionaries.

About the Oxford English Corpus
What is a corpus? How big is the Oxford English Corpus and what is it used for?

Composition and Structure

What Can We Find Out About Our Language?

Using the Oxford Corpus

The Corpus and the Dictionary Entry

Technical Information

Using the Corpus in Your Research

Corpus Demonstrations
Explore the corpus yourself by viewing one of our demos.

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