June 2003 newsletter

On 19 April 1928, the final section of the First Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published. The event was formally celebrated on 6 June with a special dinner at Goldsmiths' Hall in London, attended by numerous distinguished parliamentarians (including the Prime Minister), peers, and prominent figures from the worlds of academia, publishing, and journalism. To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of this great milestone in English lexicography, this issue of OED News is largely given over to a miscellany of historical items, stretching back to the very earliest days of the project and even beyond.

As a reminder, however, that the story of the Dictionary is a continuing one, I would not wish to overlook the fact that this month marks another historical milestone. The June 2003 OED Online update extends the range of publicly available revised entries into the letter N for the first time. For those of us engaged in creating today's OED, "one letter down, only 25 to go" is also cause for celebration.

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