Australian National Dictionary Centre

The Australian National Dictionary Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra is a major centre for lexicographical research in Australia. It is jointly funded by the Australian National University and Oxford University Press Australia.

The Centre conducts research into Australian English and provides Oxford University Press with editorial expertise for its Australian dictionaries.

The founding director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, W.S. (Bill) Ramson (1933–2011), was one of several researchers and academics in the 1970s who saw the need for a general Australian dictionary. In the late 1970s, based at the Australian National University in Canberra, he began research on a dictionary of Australianisms based on historical principles. The dictionary would be an Australian version of the Oxford English Dictionary. After several years of data collection a publishing contract was signed with Oxford University Press (Australia) in 1983, and Ramson and his team began work on the editing process. The trials and tribulations of this process are outlined in Ramson’s book Lexical Images (OUP, 2005).

The Australian National Dictionary Project became the Australian National Dictionary Centre with the signing of a contract between Oxford University Press and the Australian National University in 1988. The Centre hosted the Australex conference in November 2011.

The Australian National Dictionary Centre publishes a number of monographs resulting from data collection from regional sources: glossaries covering Tasmanian, Western Australian, Queensland, and South Australian words, along with monographs about specific subgenres of Australian English such as Aboriginal English, military slang, and the language of early Australian gold-miners.

The Australian National Dictionary Centre produces the general Australian Oxford Dictionaries such as the Australian Oxford Dictionary, the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary, the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary. It also produces the fleet of major Australian dictionaries for primary schools such as the First Australian Dictionary and the Australian Middle Primary Dictionary, and secondary schools such as the Australian School Dictionary and the Australian Student’s Colour Dictionary.

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