Oxford English Dictionary Free Download

Overview

                   in universities and colleges The leading single-volume English dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary of English is the foremost authority on current English usage.

* Offers the most comprehensive coverage of English from around the world

* Completely revised and updated to include the very latest vocabulary, with over 350,000 words, phrases, and meanings

*Thousands of words and senses derived from the latest research from the Oxford English Corpus, giving the most complete and accurate picture of the English language today

* About 75,000 audio pronunciations of both common and rare words, doubled with both British & American voice versions, including words with controversial pronunciation or with variant pronunciations

* This edition includes thousands of brand-new words and senses, as well as up-to-date encyclopedic information.

Introduction

                                      The Famous Oxford English Dictionary (OED), published by the Oxford University Press, is a descriptive dictionary of English. As well as describing English usage in its many variations throughout the world, it traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers.

                                      The second edition, published in 1989, amounted to 21,728 pages in 20 volumes. Work began on the dictionary in 1857 but it was not until 1884 that it started to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project under the name A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society. In 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was first used unofficially on the covers of the series and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, it fully replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one volume supplement and more supplements came over the years until 1989 when the second edition was published. Since 2000, a third edition of the dictionary has been underway, approximately a third of which is now complete.