OED3: the next instalment

The launch of the OED Online in mid March marked the start of a new phase in the life of the OED on at least two fronts. The OED Online as a publishing feat has been reviewed widely in the media: greater accessibility, ever-increasing functionality, and much more (see Mark Dunn's article below). The OED Online launch also signalled the editorial rebirth of the OED, with the publication of the first thousand new and revised entries, in the range M-mahurat.

Further instalments of updated text are planned for quarterly publication. In June we see the second range (mai-mamzer) released, with the third range (man-march stone) planned for September.

There are several ways of characterizing the recently published range from mai to mamzer. It rests around the monumental entry for the verb to make, which already consisted of 260 subsenses and over 40,000 words of text in the Second Edition of the OED. The revised text presents earlier and re-dated evidence for 100 of those 267 meanings, whilst adding some 40 new meanings and phrases, now explained and illustrated in over 70,000 words of text. New earlier examples include to make off (to depart suddenly or hastily: 1680 from 1709), to make up (to invent a falsehood; 1650 from 1825), to make over (to hand over into a possession, especially formally; 1478 from 1546). New meanings of make included for the first time include: to make camp (1846-), to make up (to promote; 1943-), (of a student) to make (a grade, score, etc.; 1870-), etc. Other extensive entries in the range include mail, main, maintain, major, and male.

Approximately eighty of these thousand entries are derived from proper names: a Maine-iac (new entry; 1837-) is an inhabitant of Maine, the Majorana force (new) owes its name to Ettore Majorana, an early twentieth-century Italian physicist, Majorism and Majorite (both new) to the former British prime minister, Malapropism (1830 from 1849) to Mrs Malaprop, in Sheridan's The Rivals.

For a grimmer view, we can look at the names of diseases that occur in this range. The general words malady and malease, and malign (referring to a disease) date back to the Middle Ages, as do malamort (a disease characterized by running sores, especially in an animal) and mallenders; malignant (of a disease) to the sixteenth century; malaria to the mid eighteenth; and the Caribbean skin lesion mama-pian to 1822 (formerly 1889).

Other issues you may like to ponder while looking through these entries are: why did the Mercers' Company choose the head and shoulders of a young woman as their cognizance from at least 1415 (see maidenhead); what is the true origin of malarkey (still unknown); why was Maid Marian adopted as the name of a character in the morris dance and the May game; which varieties of English use mail and which use post; was there really a Parisian hosier, Monsieur Maillot, who gave his name to the ballet-dancers' tights, or does the word derive from the French for 'swaddling-clothes'?