LINGUIST List 5.19

Tue 04 Jan 1994

Qs: Help on the new Oxford English Dictionary

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Alan Hughes, A New OED

 An Appeal to the Scientific Community

Work has recently begun at Oxford University Press on a comprehensive
revision of the Oxford English Dictionary, to be published in 2005.

As part of the process of revising and updating the Dictionary, we would like
to encourage scientists who have information relevant to the OED to draw it
to our attention.

Such information may include:

 1) the coinages of particular scientific words

 2) factual errors in their definitions

 3) scientific words and meanings not in the OED

 4) earlier referenced examples of words and meanings already
 treated in the dictionary (and later examples of those described
 as obsolete)

Category 4 is especially useful: the OED is a historical dictionary
which attempts to trace every word and meaning back to its earliest known
use in the English language, as well as giving references to the coinages of
foreign precursors of English words.

As an example, Professor Joshua Lederberg has mailed us about the omission
of C. S. Peirce's philosophical sense of `abduction', not recorded in the
OED, and his own coinage of the words `eugram' and `eugraphy'.

Please email oed3oup.co.uk, or write to the Chief Science Editor, Oxford
English Dictionary, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. And pass this
message on to whomever may be interested.

 Alan Hughes
 Chief Science Editor January 1994