This is the set of 20-Volume edition of The Oxford English Dictionary. It traces the usage of words with a unique historical focus.

Summary of the Book

Associated with each word and definition is a chronologically organized group of quotations that trace the usage of words, and show the contexts in which they can be rightly used. The words are drawn from an enormous variety of sources worldwide - literary, technical, scholarly, and popular - and represent authors as disparate as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Erica Jong, Charles Darwin and Isabella Beeton. Detailed information on pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), listings of alternate spellings used throughout each word's history, comprehensive treatment of etymology, and details of area of usage and of any regional characteristics are included. The online print edition is updated quarterly, and this award-winning online resource allows the Dictionary to advance with the English language, while the print edition remains as a historical record.

About Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is a renowned publishing house that develops and publishes high quality textbooks, scholarly works, and academic books for school courses, bilingual dictionaries and also digital materials for both learning and teaching. It is a division of the University of Oxford. The first book was locally published in the year 1912. Some of the books published under their banner are India’s Ancient Past, Atkins’ Physical Chemistry, Companion to Politics in India, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, and Common Mistakes at IELTS Advanced …and How to Avoid Them.