The publication of the final volume of the OED Supplement marks the completion of a work which will last longer and prove more influential than anything else published this half-century (The Times of London). It is the final piece of a great jigsaw that provides the fullest possible treatment of the English language from the middle of the twelfth century to 1980s. Within the alphabetical range of Se to Z, this volume contains all the new words that have come into use during the twentieth century and includes as well the countless new meanings that have been applied to older words.

The advent of the electronic age is certainly reflected in this volume. Words like SNOBOL, transputer, and wysiwyg draw attention both to the wizardry of the green screen and to the way the computer wizards themselves embrace the techniques of modern word-formation. The book abounds with new vocabulary taken from all walks of life and from many countries, and presented with the full etymological apparatus for which the OED is famous. Self-fulfilling prophecy, smokefall (from T.S. Eliot), software, Sputnik, test-tube baby, wind of change, Yerkish (the sign language of chimpanzees), yogibogeybox (from James Joyce), and Zen Buddhism–they’re all here, along with more than 15,000 other words and phrases, whose meanings and historical origins will prove an endless source of delight of word lovers throughout the English-speaking world.

It is estimated that new words enter the language at the rate of 400 a year; the OED and it Supplement constitute the best record available of this constantly developing organism. Altogether about 62,750 words are treated in the four volumes of the Supplement, described by Newsweek as like the work from which it depends…the present last word, the indispensable addendum to what is, in all probability, the greatest continuing work of scholarship that this century has produced.

About the Author:

Robert Burchfield, Chief Editor of the Oxford University Press Dictionaries Department and a Senior Research Fellow at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, is also the author of The Spoken Word and The English Language.

At last–the completion of one of the century’s great scholarly undertakings