Discover the story of English
More than 600,000 words, over a thousand years
Welcome to OED Online. If you or your library subscribes, dive straight in to the riches of the English language. If not, click on the images below to learn more about the OED, see What's new, or take a look at Aspects of English, our language feature section.
Get your annual subscription for just £100/$100!
Oxford Languages Word of the Year 2022
Goblin mode is our 2022 Word of the Year, recognising our desire, particularly as we emerged from the pandemic, to engage in 'unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy' behaviour that typically 'rejects social norms or expectations'. We made history with Word of the Year in 2022, as we asked you to help us choose. Visit our web page for the full story.
December 2022 update
Our latest update: more than 800 new words, senses, and sub-entries have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in our latest update, including final girl, tallywacker, and pinkie promise.
New words notes: Learn more about the words added to the OED this quarter in our new words notes by OED Senior Editor, Jonathan Dent.
Release notes: OED Executive Editor, Matthew Bladen, explores in this blog post how Charlie Brown made it into the OED and popularised the word, blockhead.
Release notes: Enjoyed our new football entries in our last update? Then have a read of OED Executive Editor, Andrew Ball's football related update in the Historical Thesaurus of the OED.
Release notes: OED Senior Consultant Phonetics Editor, Matthew Moreland, explores Indian English and Naturalization in this blog post.
Helpful resources
- Subscribe
- Learn about the OED
- Help with using OED Online
- Video guides for the OED
- For librarians
- For students and teachers
- Abbreviations used in the OED
- Key to the pronunciation
- Key to symbols and other conventions
- OED webinars
- How-to guide: exploring OED quotations
- How-to guide: using the Historical Thesaurus
- How-to guide: searching the OED
- Guidance on labels and date ranges