"The First Edition began publication in 1884 under the editorship of James Murray, and was completed in 1928. Supplements appeared in 1933, and again between 1972 and 1986. In 1989 the Second Edition appeared, amalgamating the First Edition and the later supplementary material, and adding about 5,000 new entries, and that edition forms the basis for OED Online.

In 1993 and 1997 there followed a further three volumes of supplementary material, known as Additions, and these are also included in OED Online. Now, for the first time, the whole OED is being updated, and the growing set of new and revised entries representing the latest progress towards a new edition will be available online.

According to The Times, the Oxford English Dictionary is "the ultimate authority on the English language as well as a history of English speech and thought from its infancy to the present day". It is a unique source of scholarly information on the meaning, history and pronunciation of words both past and present.

The OED:

• provides authoritative definitions of over 500,000 words
• traces the usage of words from their first recorded occurrence to the modern period through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international language sources
• offers the best in etymological analysis and detailed listings of variant spellings
• uses the International Phonetic Alphabet to show pronunciation

These features make OED Online the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work of its kind for any language."