Showing 1-5 of 5 entries
“History of English”
Resistance is fertile: the language born of the feminist movement
Ninety years ago today, while Charles Onions and his team were raising a glass to the completion of a project that had been fifty years in the offing, women across…
Find out more
Americanisms (and ‘America Firsters’) in the OED
When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary were putting the finishing touches on the first edition ninety years ago, they knew their work was in no way ‘complete’. The…
Find out more
Another find from Shakespeare’s World – a startling antedating for partner meaning ‘spouse’
One of the most distinctive modern uses of partner is to denote the ‘significant other’ in one’s life. OED3 defines this sense (5a) as: A person who is linked by…
Find out more
1928: the Year of the Dictionary
‘This year, whatever else it may be, is the Year of the Dictionary.’ So wrote Charles Onions in the Times of 19 April 1928, in an article celebrating the completion…
Find out more
Words as old as the OED
When the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was finally completed in 1928, the world of 1857, when work on the dictionary began, must have seemed impossibly distant. Radio,…
Find out more
