LibGuides: Oxford English Dictionary: Home

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OED Description

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of more than 600,000 words—past and present—from across the English-speaking world. As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.

OED updates

December 2023 update

Our latest update: The latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary includes more than 500 new and revised words, phrases, and senses, including nice-to-have, swear jar, and with a cherry on top.

New word notes: Learn more about the words added to the OED this quarter in our new words notes by OED Editor, Chris Spathis.

Release notes: Learn about the history and development of the word slang, looking back to its origins in the criminal underworld, in this article by OED Senior Editor, Jonathan Dent.

Platform updates: learn about updates to the OED website for the OED December 2023 update here.

New resources

New classroom materials
Visit the OED's teaching resources page to find two new lesson plans, a grammar poster on types of noun, and a downloadable 'birthday word' postcard.

https://public.oed.com/teaching-resources/

Resources for academics

Visit our Webinar Schedule

Visit the OED's webinar and events page

Search Box

Widget Code

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Video guides

Navigating an Entry
Explore the different views available for entries, and become familiar with the information being displayed in entry pages.
Quick Search
Learn how to access and use the quick search function, along with some quick shortcuts for word group searching.
Advanced Search
Understand how to access a results page depending on a variety of topics such as subject, language of origin, date of entry, and more. This can be especially useful if you are searching for very specific.
Understanding the Sidebar
Learn more about the navigation aid and information displayed to the right of entry pages, and how the sidebar can provide in-depth information about the word you are examining.
Understanding the Results Page
Become familiar with the list of results displayed after a search, and how they are organised.
Categories
Explore another way to search OED entries, according to subject, usage, region, or origin.
Sources
Learn how to search the OED by a specific source, and how to quickly find a full list of quotations from an author.
Finding the Help Section
See where the help section is located on the public pages, and how to get in contact with the OED team for further assistance.
The Historical Thesaurus of the OED: categories
Learn about how the Historical Thesaurus is structured and how to start exploring this resource.
Using the Historical Thesaurus in research
Learn how the Historical Thesaurus can be used to find different words for a particular concept over time, and to explore patterns within semantic fields.

Tools and resources

How are words added to the OED?
Learn about how words are added to the OED and view our interactive graphic following the journey of a word.
Teaching resources
Teachers and instructors can find resources here for utilizing the the OED within the classroom, including lessons plans, a grammar guide, and quizzes. Lesson plans are organized by grade/year and type of lesson.

Example lesson plan: a lexical jounrey into Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Exploring OED quotations
A guide to exploring OED quotations, what the information shown in the quotations section means, and where to find more context for a particular quotation.
Guidance on labels and date ranges
When would a word be considered to be obsolete? When it is archaic and when is it considered to be rare?
The Historical Thesaurus of the OED
View the how-to guide: https://public.oed.com/wp-content/uploads/OED-Historical-Thesaurus-how-to.pdf

Find out more about the Historical Thesaurus: https://public.oed.com/blog/oed-historical-thesaurus-guide/

Listen to the recording of our recent webinar, OED Historical Thesaurus 15-minute virtual tour: https://public.oed.com/webinars-and-events/
Searching the OED
Discover some of the interesting things you can find in the OED by performing particular searches, and view the 'Searching the OED' how-to guide.

About the OED

Meet the editors

Learn about the work of the OED's various editorial team in a collection of videos, interviews and articles from the OED blog.

The revision of bear Learn about the process a word goes through when it is revised, using the entry for bear, n.1 as an example. Visit the blog post to learn why our entry for bear now covers anteaters, helicopters, doughnuts, and caterpillars: https://public.oed.com/blog/the-revision-of-bear-n-1-march-2020/?utm_campaign=oupac-campaign:https://tinyurl.com/mj3pfe43