What's new
Latest online update: December 2011
With December's release 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.
Read more about the revisions in the December update from the Chief Editor of the OED, John Simpson.
Learn about the importance of noun compounds and how they can illuminate the language and preoccupations of the 20th and 21st centuries just as effectively as the new senses which have arisen in this period.
See the complete list of new word entries in the December update.
The OED publishes four updates a year. The next update will be added to the dictionary in March 2012.
In December 2010 the OED online relaunched with new functionality and the addition of the Historical Thesaurus of the OED. Read about the featured changes.
Latest articles on OED Online
Windows on to words: dive into the OED!
Shapers of English: Tania Styles looks at place names in the OED.
English in time: Craig Leyland explains how the OED team chooses the Word of the Day.
English in use: Penny Silva writes about South African English.
More English in use: Richard Shapiro examines whether Indian cardinal numbers are the most distinctive counting system in English.
Word stories: Denny Hilton on The ‘auto-’ age .
Word of the Day: Sign up to Word of the Day or follow OED Online on 
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More articles
- Surnames in English. You can also read more features in Shapers of English.
- Geordie, pitmatic, and north-eastern dialects. You can also read more features on English in use.
- Victorian English. You can also read more features on English in time.
- Information. You can also read more Word stories
Videos
New video shorts: a series of videos now live examines how the OED is produced behind the scenes:
- Writing the OED
- Writing the OED: New Words
- Writing the OED: In the Stacks
- Writing the OED: American English
- Writing the OED: Grammar
- Writing the OED: Megalosaurus
- Writing the OED: Potato Salad
- Writing the OED: March 2011 update