Taking the Oxford English Dictionary online in March 2000

When we were planning the current comprehensive revision and updating of the Oxford English Dictionary in the early 1990s we envisaged working towards a printed publication of the Dictionary, supported by a CD-ROM. However, since then our editorial and publication plans have changed dramatically.

By 1993 or 1994 we began to receive a trickle of enquiries asking whether the OED was available on the Internet. These typically came from the academic community, where an expectation was growing (especially at that time in North America) that online searching of major reference and other textual resources would soon become a principal medium of access.

We are now pleased to announce that the Oxford English Dictionary will be available online from March 2000. The first version will contain the full text of the current Second Edition of the Dictionary, along with the contents of three volumes of Additions (roughly 9,000 entries) published in book form between 1993 and 1997. Online publication will enable the Oxford English Dictionary to move with the times as never before.

Editorially, perhaps the most exciting development is that the first release of the Oxford English Dictionary online in March 2000 will include a range of 1,000 revised entries. Readers of the Newsletter will know that the Dictionary is being completely revised - with every word and every meaning fully reviewed and updated, and new words and meanings added. Every quarter we expect to publish further revised material, until the current cycle of revision is complete (scheduled for the year 2010).

The work of revising and updating the OED is a fascinating undertaking, and one which is expected to double the length of the Dictionary's text as earlier and later attestations of words, updated definitions, pronunciations, and etymologies, new historical notes and lists of spelling variants, and a broader coverage of English worldwide gradually transform the venerable Dictionary into an appropriate modern scholarly record of the history and development of the English language.

Users will be able to search both the new and the unrevised texts, switching between them at will to compare the treatment of English in different versions of the OED. Furthermore, we hope that online publication will stimulate intensive scholarly debate on the language, and that communication with the wider scholarly community will result in additional improvements being suggested - whether in terms of definitions, etymology, or the extensive documentation of English usage which the Dictionary provides. The editors are only too aware that any revised entry can always be further improved, and early online publication will provide the vital opportunity for feedback which will help to achieve this.

In the meantime, take a moment to look at the Dictionary's web site at www.oed.com to keep up to date with the Dictionary's countdown to online publication!