1857, a British scholar, R.C. Trenzi, proposed to compile a new dictionary for objectively recording English vocabulary at the British Linguistic Society. The following year, he and F.J. Furnivall made a detailed plan, which was later published by Oxford University Press, so it was also called the Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D or OED for short). This book was written by a special committee of the British Language Society. The original editor-in-chief was H. Coleridge.

1884 is included in the first volume. The last ten volumes were published in 1928. 1933 is reproduced as 12 volume, with the addendum 1 volume, which is a huge volume of *** 13. The book received 4 1 10,000 words and cited nearly 2 million cases. This book is by far the largest language dictionary. This book was compressed into a two-volume Oxford Dictionary at 1937 because of its huge size and inconvenient access. 1944 was modified to be huge. Another scholar compiled the Oxford Illustrated English Dictionary and the Concise Oxford Dictionary, which are more convenient for ordinary people to use. Later, in addition to continuing to add words and meanings according to the original policy, a large number of English words used outside Britain were collected and four volumes of Oxford Dictionary Supplement were published. At present, these four volumes are combined with the previous volume 13 by computer to compile a complete supplementary Oxford Dictionary.

Concise Oxford dictionary

As early as the early 20th century, when all the volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary were not published, H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler brothers began to write the Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD) on this basis. The Concise Oxford Dictionary was first published in 19 1 1, and the latest edition was the eleventh edition in 2005.

Small and medium-sized dictionaries compiled according to Oxford English Dictionary include Pocket Oxford Dictionary (edited by Fowler Brothers) and Oxford Advanced Learning Dictionary (ALD).

Oxford Dictionary of Modern English for Advanced Students

Oxford Advanced Modern English Dictionary is an English dictionary written by Japanese A.S.HORNBY and others for foreign students in 1960s+0940s. When 1974 published the third edition, the word "Oxford" was added before the title, and 1989 published the fourth edition.

Because the definitions and examples in this book are better understood than those in The Concise Oxford Dictionary, and it pioneered the style of adding sentence patterns after each verb, and also noticed the countability of nouns, which is of practical value for foreigners to learn English. This book is compiled in Chinese: the second edition is Modern Advanced English-Chinese Dictionary (Oxford) published in Hong Kong, the fourth edition is the latest Modern Advanced English-Chinese Dictionary (Shanxi People's Publishing House, 199 1), and the sixth and seventh editions are Oxford Advanced English-Chinese Learning Dictionary (Commercial Press, 2004 & 2009)。