In the beginning...

The year 2003 marks the 75th anniversary of a great lexicographical milestone: in 1928 the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was completed. The project's origins go back nearly another 75 years, to 1857, though the huge scale of the work involved meant that it was many years before the Dictionary began to appear in print: the first instalment, A to Ant, appeared in 1884.

Fittingly, perhaps, for a dictionary unlike any other, the OED did not end in the conventional way with the letter Z. The work of editing different parts of the alphabet was divided between four Editors, each with his own staff, and the team led by Charles Talbut Onions had brought out the section containing the letters X Y Z in 1921. (The last word alphabetically, zyxt, was subsequently used as a trade name by a soap manufacturer, who was presumably keen to suggest that their product represented 'the last word' in cleanliness.)

The final section of the OED to be published, containing words from Wise to Wyzen, appeared on 19 April 1928. The first copies of the complete Dictionary, now extending to 10 large volumes, were presented to King George V and President Calvin Coolidge.

Not that this could be the end of the story. As soon as the Dictionary was finished, Charles Onions and his assistants set to work on a Supplement, which dealt mainly with words and meanings added to the language during the previous fifty years. The other surviving Editor, William Craigie, who was now editing the Dictionary of American English in Chicago, also provided much supplementary material on American usages. (The other two Editors, James Murray and Henry Bradley, had died some years before the Dictionary was completed.) The Supplement was published in one volume in 1933, and of course the task of revising and updating the OED's coverage of the ever-expanding English language has continued down to the present day.

Printer friendly version

The Oxford English Dictionary is available in print as a CD Rom and online For a chronology of Oxford Dictionaries, including the OED click here

Special offer!

To celebrate 75 years since the publication of the last fascicle of the First Edition, Oxford University Press is offering the Second Edition at a special discounted price to customers in the USA