The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world, from North America to South Africa, from Australia and New Zealand to the Caribbean. It also offers the best in etymological analysis and in listing of variant spellings, and it shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

As the OED is a historical dictionary, its entry structure is very different from that of a dictionary of current English, in which only present-day senses are covered, and in which the most common meanings or senses are described first. For each word in the OED, the various groupings of senses are dealt with in chronological order according to the quotation evidence, i.e. the senses with the earliest quotations appear first, and the senses which have developed more recently appear further down the entry. In a complex entry with many strands, the development over time can be seen in a structure with several 'branches'.

The Second Edition of the OED is currently available as a 20-volume print edition, on CD-ROM, and now also online. Updated quarterly with between one and two thousand new and revised entries, OED Online offers unparalleled access to the 'greatest continuing work of scholarship that this century has produced' (Newsweek). To find out more about the OED Online, why not follow our free tour?

'About the Oxford English Dictionary' invites you to explore the intriguing background and distinctive character of the OED. Here, you will find in-depth articles about the history of the OED, an inside look at the programmes used to enlarge and update the OED entries, little-known facts about its content, and much more.