Recent updates to the OED

The OED is updated four times a year, every March, June, September, and December.

The material added to the dictionary includes revised versions of existing entries (which replace the older versions), and new words and senses both within the alphabetical sequence of revised entries and also across the whole A to Z range.

Published quarterly since 2000, the updates make up the Third Edition of the OED. 

 

The latest update

With December's update we arrive at the start of the alphabet with revisions to words and phrases beginning with the letter A, from aa (a stream or watercourse) to aevum (an age; eternity), including abstract, ace, Adam’s apple, and adolescent.

 

This update also marks another landmark, the completion of work converting the 6,000+ quotations in the OED from Edmund Spenser's Fairie Queene from the various editions cited in the first edition of the dictionary to the first printing of this seminal work.

There are over 1,200 newly revised and updated entries in all.

•    Read more about the revisions in the December update from the Chief Editor of the OED John Simpson.

•    New words added in this update

The OED publishes four updates each year. The next update will be added to the dictionary in March 2011.

Previous updates

The previous updates page gives a full list of updates from March 2000 to September 2011.