Free OED
The new OED Online offers many tasters and routes into the dictionary’s 600,000 words and 3 million quotations. If you like words, then these may be for you.
600,000 words via your local library’s subscription
Access the new OED Online free and from home using your local library’s subscription. Nearly every public library in the United Kingdom now subscribes to the OED. Remote access means you can log-in at home—or anywhere at any time—using your library membership number. Find out more.
The OED is also available worldwide via the libraries of universities, colleges, schools, and other institutions. We offer 30-day trials of the OED Online for non-subscribing institutions as well as personal subscriptions to the OED.
Sign up to ‘Word of the Day’
Every day we send out a different word from the Third Edition of the OED by email as our Word of the Day. Why not sign up? It’s easy and it’s free – once you’ve checked our legal notice and privacy statement, simply
Click the button on the right hand side of the page and follow the instructions in the lightbox.
Any problems? Please email us: oedwotd@oup.com. To cancel this service, send a plain text message to listserv@webber.uk.hub.oup.com consisting of the textsignoff oedwotd-l and leave the subject line blank. Alternatively, use this unsubscribe mail link.
We also send out daily Word of the Day links in our RSS web feed. Sign up on the homepage.
You can also follow the OED on Twitter.
Aspects of English
In addition to its quarterly updates of revised entries and new words, the OED Online includes regular commentaries on the language, written by dictionary editors and specialist authors.
Aspects of English explore the history, shapers, and uses of the language, as well as word stories offering many routes into the OED.
More free content from Oxford
From Oxford Dictionaries English
- receive a second word of the day from Oxford’s largest dictionary of current English (sign up on the home page)
From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- sign up for a topical Life of the Day from 57,500 people who left their mark on British history worldwide
- subscribe to a fortnightly podcast of a popular biography; there are more than 120 episodes available in the archive, from Friar Tuck to John Lennon
- you can also follow the Oxford DNB on Twitter
From the American National Biography
- a biography of the day drawn from more than 19,000 shapers of American history