The third edition of the OED will not come out in print -- or will it?
posted by angrycat on Aug 30, 2010 - 75 comments

The Secret History of Typography in the Oxford English Dictionary. Although sadly not about font design or kerning, Nick Martens' exploration in the OED is still pretty interesting. [more inside]
posted by shakespeherian on Jan 21, 2010 - 28 comments

Give me a Glasgow kiss! The OED's newest English words. Glasgow kiss, n. [ Glasgow, the name of a city in west central Scotland + KISS n., in humorous allusion to the reputation for violence accorded to some parts of the city. Cf. earlier Liverpool kiss s.v. LIVERPOOL n.] A head-butt.
posted by mfoight on Jun 10, 2004 - 19 comments

Fuckwit, superwaif, infoholic, and blamestorming! The December 2003 quarterly update of the Oxford English Dictionary now available. (Scroll to the bottom of the list for the naughty new words). So what's your fav newly "authorized" word?
posted by mfoight on Dec 15, 2003 - 20 comments

Uber-dictionary! If you're a student and get your access through a university, there's a fairly good chance the university subscribes to the Oxford English Dictionary online. Which means you get the OED too! regardless, it's 100x the dictionary m-w is.
posted by clockwork on Oct 18, 2001 - 23 comments

So you read the "Madman and the Professor" and thought it interesting. Edward Ruloff is another murdering philologist with the extra cachet that his 1871 trial for killing a dry-goods clerk was one of the first to test the admissability of photographs as evidence. The Supreme Court agreed with lower rulings that they could be allowed; Ruloff was hanged. In 1845, he had been accused of murdering his wife and child and was imprisoned for ten years for the abduction of his wife, but without a corpus delecti, he could not be convicted for the murder of his child. This man is writing a biography of Ruloff; a publisher could do a lot worse.
posted by Mo Nickels on Sep 26, 2001 - 3 comments

"Doh!" added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Homer Simpson is the man.
posted by danwalker on Jun 14, 2001 - 45 comments