October 2000 newsletter

One of the most satisfying aspects of our current work revising the OED is our enhanced ability, given the wealth of texts which have been published since the appearance of the First Edition, to fill out the history of individual words. Often this just means adding earlier and later examples (antedatings and postdatings), but occasionally new evidence shows us that a word or phrase has a radically different origin and development to that envisaged by the first editors.

In this issue of the OED Newsletter James McCracken takes us through this process of discovery with the OED's entry for mantrap, one of the many headwords included in the latest update of OED Online.

On a more personal note Fiona McPherson gives us a description of her experience of working on the OED, with A Day in the Life (of an OED Editor), and Alan Hughes pays tribute to Richard Palmer, the OED's longest-serving editor.

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