Editing Oxford English Dictionary (section)

== Entries and relative size ==
[[File:Murray OED vocabulary types diagram.svg|thumb|right|Diagram of the types of English vocabulary included in the ''OED'', devised by [[James Murray (lexicographer)|James Murray]], its first editor]]

According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to "key in" the 59 million words of the ''OED'' second edition, 60 years to proofread them, and 540 [[megabyte]]s to store them electronically.<ref name=facts2004 /> As of 30 November 2005, the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' contained approximately 301,100 main entries. Supplementing the entry [[headword]]s, there are 157,000 bold-type combinations and derivatives;<ref>A bold type combination has a significantly different meaning from the sum of its parts, for instance '''sauna-like''' is unlike an actual sauna. {{Cite web |url=http://www.oed.com/archive/oed2-preface/gen-combinations.html |title=Preface to the Second Edition: General explanations: Combinations |date=1989 |access-date=16 May 2008 |website=Oxford English Dictionary Online |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516195533/http://www.oed.com/archive/oed2-preface/gen-combinations.html |archive-date=16 May 2008}}</ref> 169,000 italicized-bold phrases and combinations;<ref>Italicized combinations are obvious from their parts (for example ''television aerial''), unlike bold combinations. {{Cite web |url=http://www.oed.com/archive/oed2-preface/gen-combinations.html |title=Preface to the Second Edition: General explanations: Combinations |date=1989 |access-date=16 May 2008 |website=Oxford English Dictionary Online |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516195533/http://www.oed.com/archive/oed2-preface/gen-combinations.html |archive-date=16 May 2008}}</ref> 616,500 word-forms in total, including 137,000 [[pronunciation]]s; 249,300 [[etymology|etymologies]]; 577,000 cross-references; and 2,412,400 usage [[quotation]]s. The dictionary's latest, complete print edition (second edition, 1989) was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the ''OED2'' was for the verb ''set'', which required 60,000 words to describe some 580 senses (430 for the bare verb, the rest in [[phrasal verb]]s and idioms). As entries began to be revised for the ''OED3'' in sequence starting from M, the record was progressively broken by the verbs ''make'' in 2000, then ''put'' in 2007, then ''run'' in 2011 with 645 senses.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29winchester.html?_r=0 |title=A Verb for Our Frantic Time |last=Winchester |newspaper=The New York Times |date=28 May 2011 |access-date=26 December 2013 |first=Simon |archive-date=9 January 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150109123843/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29winchester.html?_r=0 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Simpson |url=http://www.oed.com/news/updates/revisions0712.html |title=December 2007 revisions – Quarterly updates |work=Oxford English Dictionary Online |publisher=OED |date=13 December 2007 |access-date=3 August 2010 |first=John |archive-date=9 January 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109203042/http://www2.oed.com/news/updates/revisions0712.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |title=Make, put, run: Writing and rewriting three big verbs in the OED |last=Gilliver |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Gilliver |date=2013 |journal=Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America |volume=34 |doi=10.1353/dic.2013.0009 |issue=34 |pages=10–23 |s2cid=123682722}}</ref>

Despite its considerable size, the ''OED'' is neither the world's largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language. Another earlier large dictionary is the [[Grimm brothers]]' [[Deutsches Wörterbuch|dictionary of the German language]], begun in 1838 and completed in 1961. The first edition of the {{lang|it|[[Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca]]}} is the first great dictionary devoted to a modern European language (Italian) and was published in 1612; the first edition of {{lang|fr|[[Dictionnaire de l'Académie française]]}} dates from 1694. The official dictionary of Spanish is the {{lang|es|[[Diccionario de la lengua española]]}} (produced, edited, and published by the [[Royal Spanish Academy]]), and its first edition was published in 1780. The ''[[Kangxi Dictionary]]'' of Chinese was published in 1716.<ref>{{cite web |title=Kangxi Dictionary |url=http://history.cultural-china.com/en/46H211H789.html |access-date=21 October 2013 |website=cultural-china.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130330200345/http://history.cultural-china.com/en/46H211H789.html |archive-date=30 March 2013 }}</ref> The largest dictionary by number of pages is believed to be the Dutch {{lang|nl|[[Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal]]}}.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.worldslargestdictionary.com/ |title=The world's largest dictionary |access-date=2 July 2021 |archive-date=9 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709183129/https://www.worldslargestdictionary.com/}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Willemyns |first=Roland |title=Dutch: Biography of a Language |year=2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-985871-2 |pages=124–26}}</ref>
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