OUP Dictionaries

Oxford University Press Dictionaries consists of three licensed resources: Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionaries Online, and Who's Who and Who Was Who.

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.

As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from Dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.

The OED started life more than 150 years ago. Today, the dictionary is in the process of its first major revision. Updates revise and extend the OED at regular intervals, each time subtly adjusting our image of the English language.

Oxford Dictionaries Online

At Oxford Dictionaries, we have just one thing in mind: improving communication through an understanding and passion for language. That explains why we’ve been making dictionaries for more than 150 years and why we continue to innovate and develop new tools and services to suit your language needs as technology and the world around us change. And that’s why today we create content for whoever you are – student or professional, writer or games puzzler, teacher or language learner – and for wherever you need it: online, mobile, or print.

For us, it’s not only about defining words or charting the history of English in the OED. From the beginning, we have immersed ourselves in everything to do with language. As lexicographers and linguists, we collect, process, and analyse the living language and how it’s changing, its history, its usage, its relations with other languages, and who’s using it, from highbrow to slang. The result is a new Oxford Dictionaries that promises to keep evolving to meet your needs, bringing you closer to English and a growing range of world languages.

Who's Who and Who Was Who

For autobiographical information on the noteworthy & famous, Who's Who and Who Was Who provides over 34,000 entries from the new edition of Who's Who and over 100,000 entries from all 11 volumes of Who Was Who; fascinating insights into the private lives of public figures with detailed information for each person; and extensive internal cross-references - find family members and other connected entrants such as people in the same profession or people born in the same period with ease. Each entry is written by the subject themselves and can include full name, formal titles, birth date and (where appropriate) death date, education, honours, career history, recreations, contact details, and more.

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Last update: June 1, 2016