(This document was written in Spring 1995)
Thanks to the kindness of the folks at UVa's Libraries we (the
Reference Librarians) have had a limited
opportunity to explore the uses of the OED in its online form. For me
(Hugh Blackmer) this is realization of a long-run dream, an opportunity to interrogate a
favorite
resource in ways that are simply impossible using paper. I have mounted a
number of my discoveries here; the emphasis is on my own
personal view of the OED as an
investigatory tool.
You should be aware of several books
about the OED. Some general
thoughts and bits of fact about the OED may also be useful.
Several of the examples below use tables, which require the use of a
visual browser like Netscape and are difficult to view with lynx.
Peach makes a nice example of the wealth tucked
away in OED entries (Dr. Craun noted that the word for the fruit [well,
drupe...] is
Persian in origin; this example demonstrates how it has been Anglicised,
and in the
2nd, 3rd and 4th meanings we see some of the joys of homonymy)
I've been interested in Anglo-Indian English for many years. Here are
some explorations in that realm:
- Wallah in
the OED. The search asked for all entries containing
wallah, to get at the term's actual uses in context. I
then used a database program to sort the list of entries which include
the word wallah by their date of occurrence. (TABLE)
- other dictionaries on
Wallah, to provide some additional background on the term
- results
of a search for Anglo-Indian
Words
- OED entry for Hobson-Jobson
In describing the calculus, Newton used the term 'fluxion' where we would
now use 'differential'. What's the HISTORY of the term as reflected by
its use in OED quotations?
- Fluxion in the OED --presentation by
alphabetical occurrence in entire entries, to capture the context of the
term (TABLE)
- Fluxion sorted by date of
occurrence gives a very different sense of the evolution of meaning.
Note that the 'mathematical' sense begins to appear in the mid-17th c.,
and dominates in the 18th. (TABLE)
- Differential from its first cited use to
1840 (TABLE)
Another long-standing wonderment has been the many words for kinds of
cloth in English. In the absence of wildcard searching (which IS
available when the OED is searched using OpenText software, but not in
the 'dumbed down' WWW form) it turns out to be difficult to do exhaustive
searches, but here are several lists that represent my initial
strategies for this
research:
Tyler Lorig asked if I'd look into these words:
A friend asked
about these words:
Answer to a reference question: Is Glitzy
really a word?
Pshaw was my mother's fiercest expression of
displeasure (TABLE)
Retrieval of all instances of a term in quotations and of all references
to an author would be impossible in the print version:
A passage in a Robertson Davies novel alluding to "the barber's chair that
fits all buttocks" has amused me for years. Come to find out R.D.
borrowed it... Quatch
Kickshaw is another word that turns up in
odd places
How does the OED handle an 'offensive' term? The quintessentially
English 'wog' is an interesting example, and
'coarse slang' gives an idea of the breadth
of the Second Edition's coverage.
And how about one
for adolescent males? vomit will serve nicely...
Initially I saw little use for the Browse entries search, but
on a whim I tried - as a search, on the off chance that it
might work to recover the many suffixes [ -xxx
] in the OED. Much to my surprise, it worked. Here's the output
from a search for -mancy in entire. And the -ectomy and -emia
words.
The possibility to gather ALL of the quotations of a given author or in a
given work is delicious:
It is possible to limit searches by time in a number of ways, and thus
examine a year in the life of English (just the first 100 of the
quotations of books published in 1914 and 1919 are shown),
or seek quotations from a specific century or period, such as the
occurrences of 'set' before the 12th century.
And of course the joys of etymology: