Fourteen and a half pounds of words were published Thursday, September 26 – and it was the “shorter” version. The two-volume, 3,984-page long
Shorter OED dictionary is now available for $150 in stores or directly from Oxford at
www.oed.com.
Oxford University Press revised its 1993 edition of the dictionary by adding more than 3,000 new words, updating quotation paragraphs and redesigning the page layout.
“The editors also chose important words and senses from the fields of fashion, food, commerce, the sciences, and world slang. Nothing has been removed from the previous edition, the focus being on updating the text and bringing it into line with its big brother, the OED,” states Catherine Bailey, senior assistant editor, OED in the September issue of the OED newsletter.
If slang is used enough and found in a broad range of mediums, it gets a chance at being included. Terms from science fiction classics Star Wars and Star Trek made the grade for this latest Oxford English dictionary.
You’ll find definitions for Klingon, warp drive, warp factor, dilithium and Jedi.
Other “new” words are Grinches, gearheads, bunny-huggers, bunny-boilers, boggart, Internet, up to eleven, men in black and Deep Throat.
Bunny-boiler?
Remember the memorable scene in “Fatal Attraction?” Bunny-boiler equals a spurned and vindictive woman.
Wongi
The Aboriginal English word for chat, wongi, along with quite a few other words originating in Australia also was included. Andrew Stevenson covers quite of few of these in his September 26th article, “A wongi about this new dictionary…”. It’s quite informative and entertaining.
Other news from the OED newsletter:
- The archival section at the OED Online web site will be expanded in the coming months to include more historical documents, including the "Appeal to the English-Speaking and English-Reading Public" issued by the Philological Society in 1879.
- During 2002 the OED began to include quotations found on the Web as evidence in its entries.
- The creation and planned expansion of an editorial office to focus on North American English. “North America, and the United States in particular, needs a separate editorial office for several reasons, beginning with the great importance of American English today. More so than at any time in history, American English plays a dominant role internationally, exporting words from technical fields to street slang and everything in between. And unlike many other English-speaking countries, the United States has no comprehensive historical dictionary whose research can feed into the OED,” states Jesse Sheidlower, principal editor, OED (North American Editorial Unit), in the newsletter. “The NAEU is also working closely with the new words group in Oxford, carefully reviewing the high-profile new words that are so often of American origin, and drafting new entries for words that have come to our attention. Some of the words we have drafted in recent months include tipping point, gentleman's C, weaponize, collateral damage, blog, skeevy, and perp walk.”
