Dictionary milestones in reverse order
A chronology of events relevant to the history of the OED
Dictionary milestones in chronological order
2015 The OED currently defines more than 627,000 lexical items, with around 844,000 separate senses, illustrated by over 3.4 million quotations drawn from over 1,000 years of the written history of English. Over a third of the dictionary has been revised, and OED3 entries from M–Ryvita are now online, with more from across the alphabet appearing each quarter.
2013 John Simpson retires, and Michael Proffitt is appointed Chief Editor.
2009 A Historical Thesaurus of the OED appears, providing a systematic inventory of 800,000 senses from the OED and other sources.
2008 The first batch of revised entries from outside the alphabetic sequence is published online.
2001 New words from outside the alphabetic revision sequence begin to be published in OED Online.
2000 OED Online is launched. It includes the first batch of revised entries from OED3, M–mahurat.
1997 Work begins on an online version of the OED. The third and final volume of Additions appears.
1993 John Simpson is appointed Chief Editor, and work begins on the first wholesale revision of the Dictionary—the Third Edition, or OED3. The first two volumes of Additions are published.
1992 OED2 becomes available on CD-ROM.
1989 The second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED2) appears in print as 20 volumes containing 21,728 pages and costing £1,500. It defines over half a million words (including 5,000 added since the Supplement), and is illustrated by more than 2.4 million quotations.
1987 The OED appears in electronic form (on a double CD-ROM) for the first time
1986 The fourth and final volume of the Supplement appears. John Simpson, who has been working on the Supplement, joins Weiner as co-editor of the New OED.
1984 Work begins on a New Oxford English Dictionary, with Edmund Weiner as editor.
1972 The first volume of the new Supplement appears, complete with the two strongest ‘four-letter words’, which had been omitted from the First Edition and Supplement.
1957 R. W. Burchfield is appointed as editor of a new Supplement to the OED.
1933 A reprint—with a one-volume Supplement—is issued as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
1928 On 19 April the last fascicle of the NED is published. The completed dictionary is made up of 12 volumes and contains 15,487 pages, defining 414,825 words.
1923 Henry Bradley dies, leaving Craigie and Onions to complete the project.
1919 J. R. R. Tolkien joins the NED for a little over a year, working on words beginning with W.
1915 James Murray dies, and Henry Bradley becomes the senior editor at work on the dictionary.
1914 C. T. Onions joins the project as the fourth editor.
1901 W. A. Craigie joins Murray and Bradley as a third editor.
1887 Henry Bradley appointed as an independent second editor.
1885 James Murray moves to Oxford in June to work on the Dictionary full-time.
1884 The first part or fascicle of the NED, covering A–Ant, is published on 29 January (1 February in the United States).
1879 Oxford University Press agrees to publish and finance the project, and James Murray, president of the Philological Society, is appointed editor. Murray issues An Appeal to the…English-Reading Public to read Books and make Extracts for the…New English Dictionary.
1861 Coleridge dies, and Furnivall is appointed as editor in his place.
1859 The Society produces its Proposal for the Publication of a New English Dictionary (usually abbreviated as NED). Herbert Coleridge is appointed as its first editor. An appeal is made for American scholars to help the project by ‘reading books and noting words’ for inclusion.
1858 The Society resolves to begin preparing a new dictionary of English.
1857 At the suggestion of Frederick J. Furnivall, the Philological Society of London establishes ‘a Committee to collect unregistered words in English’. Richard Chenevix Trench delivers a paper On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries to the Society.