January 1996 newsletter

Since the last newsletter, our general revision has reached Mo-, while scientists are forging ahead into the letter N. We are fortunate to have with us Penny Silva, editor of the forthcoming Dictionary of South African English, who is spending two months here working on the OED. Penny is able to compare OED entries with their counterparts in DSAE and suggest the appropriate level of revision and amplification. Having started ahead of revisers at Mo-, we are hoping that she will have time to reach Z and double back on herself to reach M again before we have to relinquish her services!

We have had many letters from interested readers all over the world, as well as contributions to our quotations competition (see below), and Professor Ikebe of the University of Aizu has suggested a space for reader's opinions. If anyone has views or comments they would like to share, we would be very glad to receive any contributions for incorporation in future newsletters.

We would particularly like to thank Paul Beale, editor of Partridge's Dictionary of Slang, for all the work he is doing in combing through the dictionary and extracting material relevant to the OED. Many new terms and antedatings are coming to light as a result. Thanks are also due to Mr. Jack Howard-Drake, who has drawn our attention to the transcripts of manuscripts, now in the Oxfordshire Archives collection, which were created by him and his wife in the course of his work on church court records. These are potentially of interest not only to linguists, but also to family and local historians, and he hopes that they may take note of this valuable but largely neglected source of material. We would also like to acknowledge help from the Centre for Place Name Studies in Nottingham and the Dictionary of Traded Goods Project in Wolverhampton.