The OED, the Professor & the Madman
by Steve King
“On this date in 1928, the final volume of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published. Work on the OED began in 1879, with an original estimate that the complete four-volume set would take ten years. When it took five years to get to “ant,” the editors knew they had underestimated spectacularly — perhaps definitively, given that the OED has been in a state of perpetual addition and revision. Recent Supplements inform us, for example, that an “aliterate” is a person able to read but unwilling to do so…”
http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=4/19/2012
Stephen
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