Word Histories, Specialist reading, Examples

3. Specialist reading

A general corpus does not, by definition, contain large quantities of specialized terminology. For this reason, a directed reading programme was set up specially for the Oxford Dictionary of English, enabling additional research and collection of citations in a number of neglected fields, for example food and cooking, health and fitness, boats and sailing, photography, genetics, martial arts, and complementary medicine.

4. Examples

The Oxford Dictionary of English contains many more examples of words in use than any other comparable dictionary. Generally, they are there to show typical uses of the word or sense. All examples are authentic, in that they represent actual usage. In the past, dictionaries have used made-up examples, partly because not enough authentic text was available and partly through an assumption that invented examples were somehow better in that they could be tailored to the precise needs of the dictionary entry. Such a view finds little favour today, and it is now generally recognized that the ‘naturalness’ provided by authentic examples is of the utmost importance in providing an accurate picture of language in use.

Word Histories

The etymologies in standard dictionaries explain the language from which a word was brought into English, the period at which it is first recorded in English, and the development of modern word forms. While the Oxford Dictionary of English does this, it also goes further. It explains sense development as well as morphological (or form) development. Information is presented clearly and with a minimum of technical terminology, and the perspective taken is that of the general user who would like to know about word origins but who is not a philological specialist. In this context, the history of how and why a particular meaning developed from an apparently quite different older meaning is likely to be at least as interesting as, for example, what the original form was in Latin or Greek.

For example, the word history for the word oaf shows how the present meaning developed from the meaning ‘elf’, while the entry for conker shows how the word may be related both to ‘conch’ and ‘conquer’ (explaining how the original game of conkers was played with snail shells rather than the nut of the horse chestnut).

Additional special features of the Oxford Dictionary of English include ‘internal etymologies’ and ‘folk etymologies’. Internal etymologies are given within entries to explain the origin of particular senses, phrases, or idioms. For example, how did the figurative use of red herring come about? Why do we call something a flash in the pan? See the internal etymologies under red herring and flash.

The Oxford Dictionary of English presents the information in a straightforward, user-friendly fashion immediately following the relevant definition.

In a similar vein, folk etymologies - those explanations which are unfounded but nevertheless well known to many people - have traditionally simply been ignored in dictionaries. The Oxford Dictionary of English gives an account of widely held but often erroneous folk etymologies for the benefit of the general user, explaining competing theories and assessing their relative merits where applicable. See the folk etymologies at posh and snob.

Researching word histories is similar in some respects to archaeology: the evidence is often partial or not there at all, and etymologists must make informed decisions using the evidence available, however inadequate it may be. From time to time new evidence becomes available, and the known history of a word may need to be reconsidered. In this, the Oxford Dictionary of English has been able to draw on the extensive expertise and ongoing research of the Oxford English Dictionary.