OED - Blog Posts

On this date in 1884, the first edition of what would become the Oxford English Dictionary was published under the name A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society. Research for the OED had begun in 1857, when the Philological Society in London established an “Unregistered Words Committee” to find words that were either poorly defined, or absent from contemporary dictionaries. When the list of unregistered words outnumbered the amount of words found in nineteenth-century dictionaries, the group decided to write their own. The Oxford University Press agreed to publish the dictionary in 1879, and the group published the first fascicle – which covered A to Ant –in 1884 to disappointing sales. It wasn’t until 1928 that the final fascicle was published, totaling 128 fascicles in total.

In 1933, a thirteen-volume set including all fascicles and a one-volume supplement went on sale under its current name: Oxford English Dictionary – only seventy-six years in the making!

Pictured above is our well-loved copy of that historic first fascicle, which includes the preface to the dictionary and entries A through Ant. While the volume is huge and a little intimidating, it was only the beginning to what would become the most comprehensive dictionary in the English language.

Ed. James A.H. Murray. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society v. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888. 423 M96 v. 1.