A century of defining our language
Since the publication of its first edition in 1911, the revolutionary Concise Oxford Dictionary has remained in print and gained fame around the world over the course of eleven editions. This month heralds the publication of the centenary edition: the new 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary contains some 400 new entries, including [...]
An interactive guide to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary
The Concise Oxford Dictionary is 100 years old! To celebrate the centenary of this bestselling dictionary we have created a fascinating interactive tour charting the history of this landmark publication. Explore our interactive guide to discover the story of a dictionary that has been a trusted guide to English for millions of people, and has faithfully recorded how our [...]
Video: A short history of the COED
This video offers a quick history of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
Take our Concise Centenary quiz
To celebrate one hundred years of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, try your luck at our quiz! For a hundred years the Concise has been a record of all aspects of the English language; from the vulgar to the colloquial and from the formal to the technical. Where do certain words come from? What do [...]
Riotous words
Various English cities spent a good portion of last week dealing with rioting, avoiding the riots, commenting on said riots, and cleaning up the aftermath. Leaving aside the ongoing discussion regarding the causes and effects of these civil disturbances, it would be interesting to look at the word riot itself. Riot has been in use [...]
There’s nothing like a good spoonerism to tickle your bunny phone
The English economist Sir Roy Forbes Harrod (1900–1978) once said that, compared to all the scholars he had known at Oxford and Cambridge, the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930) was the most exceptional in “scholarship, devotion to duty, and wisdom.” There is no reason to question Harrod’s assessment, but that’s not exactly the imprint for [...]
28 million words, one corpus, and thousands of fascinating insights
Have you ever been told as a child to ‘stop daydreaming’ and pay attention? Then you will be interested to know that daydreaming is a word that is invariably used in a negative context by adults but in a much more positive sense by children. Examples from the Oxford English Corpus (a vast electronic collection [...]
Wall of words: the Berlin Wall fifty years on
The Berlin Wall was built fifty years ago on 13 August 1961. Like the concrete wall, the word wall divides Europe linguistically. Some European languages, like German and French, form their words for wall from the Latin murus. So the German for Berlin Wall is die Berliner Mauer. English, Irish, and other languages use another [...]
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