Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 6th edition

The Oxford English Mini Dictionary is small, the Little is of restricted dimensions, and the Concise aims to keep its definitions succinct, but the two-volume Shorter is only 'Short' when compared to the twenty volumes of the full Oxford English Dictionary. Although one-tenth the size of the OED, it manages to include around a third of its content – it aims to include all words used in English since 1700, as well as everything in Shakespeare, the Authorized Version of the Bible, the poetry of Milton, and Spenser's Faerie Queene. As a historical dictionary, it includes obsolete words if they are used by major authors and earlier meanings where they explain the development of a word. More than ten centuries of English are covered here, from the Old English period to the 21st century.

In that time there have been some pretty odd words, and the Shorter contains most of them. How about arctophile (a person who collects or is very fond of teddy bears), izzard (a term for the letter Z), pi-jaw (a moralizing lecture), muffin-worry (a tea party), struthious (like an ostrich), or twiffler (a plate or shallow dish)?

Mind you, new words can be just as unusual as those of the past. Some 2,500 new entries have been added to the sixth edition, among them bidie-in (a live-in partner), biffy (an American term for a toilet), not have a scooby (have no idea), and smoosh (squash or crush). For the past few years technology has been one of the chief sources of new vocabulary, and its continuing importance is reflected by additions such as darknet (a kind of illicit computer network), nanoparticle, and smart dust, but current concerns with the environment and climate change are also making themselves felt, with carbon footprint, carbon-neutral, carbon trading, and indeed the new sense of carbon, 'carbon dioxide or other gaseous carbon compounds released into the atmosphere'. On a more superficial level, Chelsea tractor, declutter, flexible friend, manbag, pap (a paparazzi photographer), size zero, WAGs, yummy mummy, and wow factor all provide evidence of our materialistic, media-fixated lives where less is more and people are constantly searching for the new black.

One of the characteristic features of the Shorter is the use of quotations to bring definitions to life. For the new edition the 83,000 existing quotations have been augmented by 1,300 new ones from such writers as Dan Brown, India Knight, Philip Pullman, Alexander McCall Smith, and Heat magazine. TV scripts are another source, such as this extract from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's The Office: 'I was surprised (pleasantly I might add) to see you are of the female persuasion.' For the first time we have used Internet sources as evidence. This extract from www.fictionpress.com is a perfect example of the British teenage use of lush, 'very pleasing or good': 'Where did you get your skirt from? It's lush.'

Lovers of the hyphen, look away now: it seems to be on the way out. Drawing on the evidence of the Oxford Reading Programme and our two–billion–word Oxford English Corpus, we removed something like 16,000 hyphens from the text of the Shorter. So it's double bass, not double–bass, ice cream not ice–cream, makeover instead of make–over, and postmodern rather than post–modern. Other spelling changes made as part of the updating of the text include cafe for café, fetus for foetus, kaftan for caftan, and raccoon for racoon.

In compiling the new Shorter we have been able to draw on the research carried out as part of the ongoing Oxford English Dictionary project. This has revealed that bog–standard, meaning 'ordinary or basic', was first used earlier than previously thought, going back to 1968 rather than 1983, and is probably an alteration of box–standard, with the idea of 'standard, straight from the manufacturer's box'. Other notable antedatings are cool, 'stylish, good', which has been taken back to 1884 from 1947, the unmarried woman's title Ms, antedated to 1901 from the 1940s, and pizza, which is now first recorded in 1825 rather than 1935.

The dictionary contains more than 3,700 pages, newly designed by Professor Paul Luna of Reading University. It is also available as a CD – every English word in the definitions is clickable, allowing you to treat it like a mini Internet and browse around the text as the fancy takes you. This is a new way to explore the endlessly surprising depths of this most rewarding of dictionaries. In short, it's the Shorter.

See more on the Sixth Edition here.

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For more on the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, click here.

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