- What new entries have been added recently?
Each quarter, many new entries and senses are added to OED Online. The Help text contains a list of the latest additions, as well as details of all previous quarterly updates.
- What is the difference between the two types of search?
The Find Word search box, located at the top right-hand corner of the screen, is used to look up the headwords and subordinate entries defined or illustrated in the Dictionary. The Full Text search box, displayed at the left-hand side of the screen by clicking the ![[Show Simple Search form]](/imgs/help/b-srch0.gif)
button, is used to find a word anywhere in the entire text of the Dictionary.
- Why do some characters in the text look odd?
The text of the Oxford English Dictionary contains a large number of special characters which are not displayable using HTML. These have been displayed using gif images created in the default typeface and size of the most commonly used browsers (Internet Explorer version 4.0 and above, and Netscape Navigator version 4.x). These gifs cannot change when the font settings on a browser are altered.
Netscape 6 and Opera users: the special characters are best viewed if the text is scaled to 110% of the default size.
- In Netscape 6, go to View/Text size/Other and type 110 in the box that appears
- In Opera, go to Preferences/Document window and select 110% from the drop-down default scaling menu
- Can I search the Greek text or the phonetic characters in the Dictionary?
Greek characters can be searched using exact character searching, available on the Advanced search page.
Phonetic characters can be searched using their keyboard equivalents in a special search area, also available on the Advanced search page.
- Why can't I find the entry for ORGANISE?
Many words can be spelled in more than one way, with preferences varying across the English-speaking world. For example, there are many verbs that can end in either -ize or -ise. The OED's policy on such verbs is to use the -ize spelling as the headword form. This also applies to words ending in -ized/-ised, -izing/-ising, and -ization/-isation. OED Online contains an entry for ORGANIZE, in which some of the quotations illustrate the -ise spelling. If in doubt, you could always use a wildcard in the search (e.g. ORGANI?E). Another way of finding variant spellings is to try a Full Text search.
- What does the symbol
mean?
It means that the word or meaning that follows is obsolete.
- Why do I get so many results when I do a Find Word search for the word TREE?
Many common words occur as parts of compounds and phrases. For example, the word TREE occurs in the compound JOSHUA TREE. In many Dictionary entries, such compounds are often compressed to avoid repetition of the headword of the entry, resulting in a Find Word match on the second component, such as TREE.
- Why does a cross-reference link sometimes take me to a results list?
Although cross-references sometimes give explicit references to parts of speech, sense numbers, etc., the link only looks for the word which appears in the cross-reference in small capitals. More than one entry may match this word-form, so the link returns a set of results.
- Why can't I find the author or work title I'm interested in?
For reasons of space in the original printed edition, some authors' names and most work titles appear in an abbreviated form. Lists of abbreviations are available for author names and work titles.
- Why can't I find quotations from Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities by using a proximity search on DICKENS and CITIES?
There are a number of possible reasons for a proximity search like this failing:
- The number of words between the two search terms could be too few. For example, a setting of 5 words or fewer is necessary to find DICKENS near CITIES
- The wrong search area could have been chosen. The search area applies to both of the search terms in a proximity search, so to find DICKENS near CITIES, the region quotations should be selected, rather than quotation author or quotation work.
- One or both of the search terms may occur in an abbreviated form. Lists of abbreviations are available for author names, and work titles.
- Why does a citation for the author 'B. Wells' take me to the wrong entry in the bibliography?
Author names in the OED are usually cited by initials and surname, and different authors occasionally share the same cited form. The links for such authors point to the same place in the bibliography, i.e. the first entry matching the particular combination of initials and surname.
The correct author can often be found by scrolling down the bibliography file, but sometimes the author is not present in the bibliography.
- Why does the 'Lost for Words' button keep reloading the same entry when clicked repeatedly?
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Your browser may be displaying an entry from its cache rather than returning to the server for a fresh entry. If you access the internet via a proxy server, it could be the proxy server that is cacheing the entry.
To display a new entry selected at random, go to the 'Lost for Words' URL http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/lfw and force the browser to reload the URL from the server, e.g. by pressing Ctrl+F5 on a PC.
- What are the browser and hardware requirements for OED Online?
OED Online should work with almost every browser that supports frames, on almost every computer. We specifically support versions 3 and above of Netscape Navigator and versions 4 and above of Internet Explorer.
- Is there a version of OED Online that does not require frames?
No, but this feature may be added in the future.
- Can I improve my speed of access to OED Online?
If you are using an old version of your browser, you should be able to improve the speed of access by upgrading it to the current version.
- Why can't I view the quick reference guide PDF?
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To view the file you need the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Click here to download the latest version.
If you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader and still cannot view the PDF, we suggest downloading the file to your hard disk and viewing the local copy. To do this, right-click on the link to the PDF file. From the pop-up menu that appears, select Save Target As... (in Internet Explorer) or Save Link As... (in Netscape and Opera), and follow the instructions that appear.
For technical support information for the Acrobat Reader, see Adobe's web site.
- Why does a search sometimes result in a blank page?
Netscape 4.7 ‘times out’ when a search takes too long, and displays a blank page with a ‘Document contains no data’ message. This can happen for complex Boolean searches displaying 1000 results at a time, for example.
If this happens, try setting the number of results displayed per page to a lower number.
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