Oxford University Press 2020
The unassailable position of the OED at the top of the bestseller list has been a fact of literary life for over 400 years. But that might be about to change with this, the long awaited and controversial third edition.
The editors have made some radical changes, most obviously ditching alphabetical order in favour of a thematic classification system. But while having ‘splash’ next to ‘puddle’ makes sense, the scheme falls apart when you want to look up a word you don’t know, rendering one of the more popular uses of the dictionary redundant.
But perhaps the most controversial change has been to slash the number of words in the dictionary, effectively reducing the size of the English language. The word count has been literally decimated. Ironically neither ‘literally’, ‘decimate’ or ‘ironic’ made the cut. So, as they say in the new English: there less words.
That’s not to say no new words have been added, but the editors have operated a one in one out policy. For example ‘meh’ is in, but ‘apathy’ is out. I think the purge makes sense. There are (or were) 1.8 million words in the previous revision of the OED. French, by comparison, has only 1200 words, and Spanish, 840.
The changes may be radical, but they’re not enough to redeem a disappointing dictionary. In trying to create an organic, relevant and definitive record of English, the editors have instead made a mess of it, paving the way for Chinese to take over as our first language.
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