Newsletter archive

News of research and developments on the Oxford English Dictionary was formerly available in periodic printed newsletters. These brought together articles by editors and others on their work for the Dictionary, appeals for help with finding evidence of words currently being revised or drafted, and reports of the editors’ recent findings about the language in all its entertaining variety.

We reproduce a small selection of those articles here.

Balderdash! And Piffle!

•  The general public changes the OED, by John Simpson, OED (June 2006)

Harmless drudgery: getting started at the OED

• First impressions of a novice lexicographer, by Alex Steer, OED (June 2006)

Tracking down ‘tofu’: library research in the US

• Ralph Waldo Emerson and the search for new words, by Pamela Roper Wagner, OED (June 2005)

Reading for the OED

• Finding new evidence for the dictionary in historical texts, by Alan Hartley, OED (June 2005)

OED Online for A level

• Experiences of introducing the OED as a classroom resource, by Jessica Stevens, (March 2005)

Lex in the City: reflections on a year in the North American Editorial Unit

• The lives of two New York lexicographers, by Madeline McDonnell and Abigail Zitin, OED (March 2003)

J.R.R. Tolkien and the OED

• Tolkien’s education at the Oxford University Press, by Peter Gilliver, OED (June 2002)

Varieties of English: World English and the OED

• English around the world and how the OED is covering it, by Jennie Price, OED (June 2001)

The OED and its cousins

• Dictionaries for other languages and varieties of English, by Edmund Weiner, OED (December 2000)

‘Ware man-traps: rethinking an OED entry

• The thought processes involved in revising a single word, by James McCracken, OED (October 2000)