An introductory guide to OED ONLINE...

Unrivalled breadth and depth Includes definitions of over 600,000 words Usage illustrated by over 2.5 million quotations Provides a unique historical record of the development of English over the last millennium Covers words and phrases from across the English-speaking world The biggest dictionary of any language in the world - now online!

Widely acclaimed The ultimate authority on the English language as well as a history of English speech and thought from its infancy to the present day The Times The greatest continuing work of scholarship that this century has produced Newsweek An essential acquisition for all libraries Library Journal

An enormous project The updating of the OED is the worlds largest humanities research project –Editorial work alone costs OUP £3 million per year! –80 in-house lexicographers, researchers and systems engineers working on the project –200 specialist advisers –Numerous external contributors At least 1000 new and revised definitions published online each year

nice Type here to do a quick search for a word And then click here or press return

Results from a Find Word search for NICE Click on a result to go to the definition

Quotations from a wide range of sources illustrate meanings and show usage The original meaning of NICE! Click here to see the entry without quotations

Scroll though the entry to see how much NICE has changed in meaning over time! As the OED is a historical dictionary, the oldest meaning of each word appears first. How many senses of NICE are there? Click on Entry Map to find out.

There are 20 different senses - use this list to navigate through the history of NICE The chronological coverage of the OED means that modern senses follow older meanings

Click on the List by Date button to see which other words entered English in 1300, the same year as NICE Click on the Date Chart button to see at a glance when each sense was in common usage

115 different types of phobia… including Anglophobia! Wildcards can be used in all search boxes… * represents any number of missing letters (including 0) ? represents 1 missing letter Type *phobia to find all words ending in phobia Select the number of results displayed per page here

62 results are found To find all 6 letter words starting MIN, simply type min???

Click here to find which other fields you can search Further search options are available from all webpages Click Simple Search to open the full text search window

Type a word or phrase in the box to find it in the full text of the Dictionary, or in a selected area from the drop-down list

Type URDU in the Search for box, select Language Names from the drop-down list, and click return to get a list. How many English words owe a debt to Urdu?

Proximity searching Click here to search for one word or phrase in association with another

Know the meaning but not the word? …and heres the word! Heres how to find the term for beer mat collectors! Its always a good idea to use an * at the end of each word as the definition could describe the activity as collector, collecting etc.

…and heres the list Heres how to find all quotations from Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice... Click here to move to Advanced Search

Which nouns derive from Hindi, entered English since 1500, and relate to food? Heres how to find out... Heres how to find nouns – or other parts of speech

…and heres the list

Words to do with music that have come into the language since 1980?

…and heres the list

Take a crossword clue such as: Which word describes a type of dance and a type of sauce? Heres how to find out...

…and heres the answer!

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