Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
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| Country | United Kingdom |
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| Language | English |
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Release number
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6 |
| Genre | Dictionary |
| Published | 21 September 2007 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Pages | 3472 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | Fifth Edition |
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) is an English language dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. The SOED is a two-volume abridgement of the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
The first editor, William Little, worked on the book from 1902 until his death in 1922. The dictionary was completed by H. W. Fowler, Jessie Coulson, and C. T. Onions. An abridgement of the complete work was contemplated from 1879, when the Oxford University Press took over from the Philological Society on what was then known as A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. However, no action was taken until 1902, when the work was begun by William Little, a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He laboured until his death in 1922, at which point he had completed "A" to "T" and "V". The remaining letters were completed by Henry Watson Fowler ("U", "X", "Y", and "Z") and Mrs. E. A. Coulson (Jessie Coulson) ("W") under the direction of Charles Talbut Onions, who succeeded Little as editor. Onions wrote that SOED was "to present in miniature all the features of the principal work" and to be "a quintessence of those vast materials" in the complete OED.
The first edition was published in February 1933. It was reprinted in March and April of that year and again in 1934.
A Second Edition appeared in 1936 contained about 3,000 revisions and additions and was reprinted in 1939.
A Third Edition was published in the United States under the name The Oxford Universal Dictionary in 1944 with reprints in 1947, 1950, 1952 and 1955. The 1955 reprint contained an addendum of new entries. The 1973 reprint, which contained an enlarged addenda with over seventy pages and a major revision of all the etymologies.
The New SOED was prepared under the editorship of Lesley Brown 1980-1993 and was the first complete revision of the dictionary and should be considered a re-abridgement of the SOED and its supplements. The whole text was completely revised for the Fourth Edition, which was published in 1993 as the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. The book attempted to include all English words which had substantial currency after 1700, plus the vocabulary of Shakespeare, John Milton, Edmund Spenser and the King James Version. As a historical dictionary, it includes obsolete words if they are used by major authors and earlier meanings where they explain the development of a word. Headwords are traced back to their earliest usage.
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