Major change in the choice of revised entries published on OED Online

The sequence of revised entries published online since March 2000 has proceeded from the letter M, to quit shilling (representing between a fifth and a quarter of the dictionary). According to that model, the present publication batch would include words from quits to somewhere early in the letter R.

But after several years of steady alphabetical publication, we have decided to vary the publication mix. The present publication range departs radically from the former model, in that its 2,116 entries consist for the most part of key English words from across the alphabet, along with the other words which make up the alphabetical cluster surrounding them. From now on, we expect to alternate between these two models each quarter, with the next publication range (in June 2008) continuing from quits, and the subsequent one (September 2008) presenting a further range of major words and their associated alphabetical clusters.

The main purpose of this change is to revise, much earlier than would otherwise have been the case, important English words whose meanings or application have developed most over the past century. Some of these key words are, as one might expect, among those often looked up by readers of the OED. This change also brings the revision more in line with our policy for publishing new words and senses, which have since June 2001 been taken from across the full alphabetical range.

The 2,116 entries in this quarterly release include 7,540 meanings, phrases, compounds, and derivatives. For a list of the most notable entries see the revised ranges table.

From this point, an extended editorial note follows the development in size and complexity of computers, alongside the new terms involving the word computer, up to the present day. This brings in the microcomputer, the tablet computer, and the personal computer, to name just three. The pervasive influence of the computer in modern culture is indicated by another surprising statistic: before revision the OED's entry contained three main senses and three compounds. A further seven compounds had been added in the OED Additions series (1993-7). The present entry retains the three main senses, but adds forty-four new components (mostly compounds, such as computer art, computer chip, computer crime, etc.). The entry as a whole testifies to the pervasive influence of the computer on our lives today. Compare the revised and unrevised versions of the entry.

gay

The modern uses of gay occur in earlier versions of the dictionary, but were in need of a thorough updating. The present work reviews all of the older senses of the word (noble, bright, light-hearted and merry, dissolute, etc.) from the Middle Ages onwards, and then looks in particular at borderlines: in particular, the shady border between pre-1940s use in homosexual contexts and post-1940s use when gay was used explicitly with reference to homosexuals. The entry presents (in parentheses) a number of early usages of the word in contexts where a present-day reader might jump to the conclusion that the sense 'homosexual' was intended, but where from consideration of the overall history this cannot be confidently asserted. The entry also finds the noun use as early as 1953 (previously 1971). Here, as elsewhere, the OED is often indebted to other researchers who have been independently seeking to establish the 'true history' of terms such as this.

Curiously, the earliest recorded date for gay in the sense 'homosexual' has travelled forwards in time. The Supplement to the OED (1972) had included as the first reference a quotation from Noel Ersine's Underworld and Prison Slang of 1935 (geycat). Several contributors and editors have noted since 1972 that this term does not illustrate this use, and it now stands as one of the illustrative quotations for gay cat (a young or inexperienced tramp: recorded from 1889 onwards).

fuck

This entry entered the OED in the first volume of its Supplement in 1972. The term (along with alphabetically related words) perhaps confront lexicographers with the most significant challenges of the current release. First of all, fuck is a taboo word in English, and this has affected how regularly it appears in print. Its relative absence from the record presents issues in terms of describing its history.

The history begins in murky circumstances. The previous edition of the OED found the verb at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in texts which (for bibliographical reasons) now need to be redated to the middle of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, this is a term about which scholars have made significant discoveries in recent years, and it is now possible to reassert an early sixteenth century date, with indications that the word is earlier.

The earliest evidence found so far is in Latin, and comes from a manuscript presumably written in England and dating from 1500 or slightly earlier. But the text is a) in code and b) in a mixed Latin-and-English context: Non sunt in cœli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. The string 'gxddbov' can be read by replacing each letter with the one before it in the alphabet (i.e. 'fuccant'). This has a Latin third-person plural ending. This usage implies but does not show the pre-existence of the word in English.

The first definite evidence for the word, then, comes from a manuscript in Oxford (MS Brasenose College, Oxford VII), dated 1528. The use was discovered recently by one of the OED's regular correspondents. In this case we have the English adjectival form, which implies use of the verb.

Fuck presents a number of other issues for the lexicographer. In terms of documentation, the absence of the word from most printed text before the mid twentieth century causes quotation difficulties. When the term or its associates do appear they are likely to be masked to avoid scandal or prosecution. Quotations which derive from recent editions of earlier texts need to be rechecked as far as possible in their earliest available form. It is not acceptable, for example, to cite D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover from a modern edition on the assumption that the word is present in the first edition (in this case the quotation used was checked in a copy of the 1928 edition, privately printed in Florence). Several of the relevant texts cited in the OED's revised entry have proved hard to track down (or bibliographically complex, or both), but wherever possible we have attempted to cite from contemporaneous documents.

The use of asterisks to mask the word is also problematic lexicographically. Whereas we might be happy to accept 'f—k' in the right context, how much less certain might we be of 'f—'? And sometimes there is no letter at all to clarify what has been omitted ('—'). In each case the editor needs to weigh whether the quotation is allowable.

The entries for fuck and related words have been considerably expanded since OED2 (1989). There the number of meanings and associated verbal phrases under the verb amounted to six. In the revised entry for the verb there are thirty-five components, showing a significant expansion of meaning and phrasal patterning (mainly from the mid twentieth century onwards).

free

One of the longest ranges of continuously revised text in the present release includes the free words (free to freewoman). The adjective free itself has a complex structure, showing the variation in use of the basic adjective over the past thousand years and more. The lexicographical issues here are largely ones of sense disambiguation (ensuring that early evidence is correctly interpreted and not placed at the wrong sense) and ones of semantic differentiation (defining so as to demonstrate the difference between senses which are closely allied semantically). The extensive number of subsenses which the adjective contains also presents challenges for the editor attempting to marry lightness of touch with analytical distinction.

Semantically the adjective lies at the heart of the many traditional western concerns (the liberty of the individual, freedom of speech, of religion, of the press, etc.). In addition it draws in freedom of movement, freedom from payment, creative freedom, etc. The variations in the core senses of the word are reflected in the extensive range of compounds in which free is used, as well as by the proliferation of adjectives along the lines of trouble-free, acid-free, sugar-free, etc. Furthermore, there are links between free and many of the other central entries in this release: air (free as air/free-to-air), ball (free ball), electricity (free electricity), Europe (free Europe), gay ('free of cares'), immunity ('freedom from penalty', etc.), and love (free love, freedom-lover).