Prequel An abridgement of the
OED was contemplated from 1879, when the
Oxford University Press took over from the
Philological Society on what was then known as
A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. However, no action was taken until 1902, when the work was begun by
William Little, a fellow of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He laboured until his death in 1922, at which point he had completed "A" to "T", and "V". The remaining letters were completed by
H. W. Fowler ("U", "X", "Y", and "Z") and
Jessie Coulson ("W") under the direction of
C. T. Onions, who succeeded Little as editor. Onions wrote that
SOED was "to present in miniature all the features of the principal work" and to be "a quintessence of those vast materials" in the complete
OED. Coulson was not credited for her contribution until the second edition.
First edition The first edition was published in February 1933. The authors included
Jessie Coulson and she was the first woman to be credited for her work on a version of the OED.
Third edition The third edition was published in the
United States under the name
The Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles in 1944 with reprints in 1947, 1950, 1952, and 1955. The 1955 reprint contained an addendum of new entries. The 1973 reprint contained an enlarged addenda with over seventy pages and a major revision of all the etymologies. • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Hardcover) • 1st? impression (1944-01-01) • The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Third Edition, revised with addenda) (Hardcover) (ASIN B01N22ETM9): Includes addenda. • ?th impression (1964-??-??) • ?th impression (1968-??-??) • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Hardcover) (/): 1 volume. • 1st? impression (1970-??-??) • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Hardcover) (/): 1 volume. • 1st? impression (1973-11-??) • The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Hardcover) (/) • ?th impression (1973-11-22) • ?th impression (1975-??-??) • The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Guild Publishing edition, Hardcover) (ASIN B00HLDC3M2) • ?th impression (1985-??-??)
Fourth edition The fourth edition was prepared under the supervision of
Lesley Brown between 1980 and 1993, and was the first revision of the entire text of the dictionary, a re-abridgement of the OED and its supplements. Published in 1993 as the
New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the book attempted to include all English words which had substantial currency after 1700, plus the vocabulary of
Shakespeare,
John Milton,
Edmund Spenser and the
King James Version of the Bible. As a historical dictionary, it includes obsolete words if they are used by major authors and earlier meanings where they explain the development of a word. Headwords are traced back to their earliest usage. The fourth edition includes 97,600 headwords, 25,250 variant spellings, 500,000 definitions, 87,400 illustrative quotations and 7,333 sources of quotations (including 5,519 individual authors). • The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Hardcover) () • ?th impression (1993-??-??) • The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary thumb index edition (Hardcover) (/) • ?th impression (1993-10-14) • The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary luxury edition (Hardcover) () • ?th impression (1993-??-??) • The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary leather bound edition () • ?th impression (1993-??-??)
Fifth edition The fifth edition was published in 2002, and contains more than half a million definitions, with 83,500 illustrative quotations from 7,000 authors. The name Shorter Oxford English Dictionary was used to emphasize the link between this two-volume dictionary and the original twenty-volume OED. • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Fifth Edition (Hardcover) (/) • ?th impression (2002-12-31) • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM Version 2.0 (/): • ?th impression (2003-01-09)
Sixth edition On 21 September 2007, the sixth edition appeared. The dictionary now included 600,000 words, phrases, and definitions, covering global English-speaking regions and 2500 new words and meanings from Oxford Dictionaries and Oxford English Corpus. As previously, the vocabulary included entries in general English from 1700 to the present day and in earlier major literary works. The dictionary included 80,000 quotations illustrating the use of words, thousands of newly discovered antedatings based on the continuing research for the OED, 2,500 new words and senses, thousands of antedatings of existing words from Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford English Corpus, many new quotations from then-recent authors, and a complete review of spelling forms and defining vocabulary. 16,000 words lost their hyphen. • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Sixth Edition (Hardcover) (/) • ?th impression (2007-09-20) • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Sixth Edition (Deluxe leather-bound Hardcover) (/) • ?th impression (2007-09-20) • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM Version 3.0 (/): Supports linking to word processors. • ?th impression (2007-09-13) • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Deluxe edition (hardcover+CD-ROM) (/): • ?th impression (2007-09-20) (The CD-ROM supports Windows 2000 or higher, Mac OS x 10.3.9 (PowerPC) or 10.4 or 10.5 (Intel) or higher). ==Electronic versions==