The first simplification is the Short Oxford English Dictionary, or SOED for short. The goal of SOED is to "present all the functions of OED in the smallest space" and "select the best part from OED's huge database".
The editors of SOED kept almost all the historical explanations of all the main words in the Oxford English Dictionary, but simplified every explanation as much as possible, greatly reducing the citation of example sentences, from 2.4 million examples in the Oxford English Dictionary to more than 80,000. At the same time, SOED no longer lists the earliest official historical materials of each meaning like OED, but only indicates the approximate age of the meaning with abbreviations after each meaning. For example, L 15 stands for1late 5th century (1400- 1429), and LME stands for late Middle English.
Although it is shorter, it is only relative to OED. Because it still covers almost all the more than 500,000 words in English history, SOED inevitably becomes a 3804-page tome. But it is still much simpler and easier to update than OED. Compared with OED, which takes 60 years to update the first edition, SOED has been published in the sixth edition.
Since the fourth edition, SOED has cut down all the old English that was used only 700 years ago, unless the word has been used by famous writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, Spencer or the King James Bible 16 1 1. It is worth mentioning that 16 1 1 King James Bible only uses more than 8,000 commonly used words in order to make ordinary people understand it, which has a great influence on English literature in later generations.
With the update of the edition, the editors of SOED constantly update the terms, meanings and representative examples. Especially for example, because it is no longer necessary to undertake the task of blind date, it can keep pace with the times. For example, the example of improvident in the Oxford English Dictionary is still the works of Samuel Daniel and other British writers in 16 and 17 centuries; In the fifth edition of SOED, it was replaced by Churchill's speech: when I was young, the parliament was an eagle of war. I prepared for the war and reserved the right to pay for it.
There is also the example of Joyce Carol Oates, a new york writer who is still alive and won the O 'Henry Prize and the National Book Award.
Of course, on the other hand, this revision is also to form certain differences with OED, otherwise SOED can only live in the shadow of OED all the time. Especially with the improvement of printing technology, Oxford published a smaller version of OED at 197 1, which is comparable to SOED in price and portability (of course, a magnifying glass is essential). An adjustment like SOED is also a change of survival.
For students who have a hobby of collecting dictionaries, the price of SOED is much more close to the people. The price of new books is about 100 US dollars, and a large number of second-hand books can be found online, only about 40 US dollars.
Like OED, SOED has also published an electronic version. It must be said that although these publishing houses are unmatched in making dictionaries, their electronic versions are often criticized: slow updating, simple functions and more unsightly interfaces. So goldendict specially appealed in official website: You publishers might as well concentrate on the content, leave the inquiry procedure to us, and you can collect money as usual. Of course, these cold publishing houses in Oxford simply don't pay attention to these right people.
Whether OED or SOED, because the title (block) is too big, it always makes people feel daunting. Especially for non-native English speakers, unless you are an English major, or even specialize in British history, you generally don't need such a professional dictionary.
However, these two dictionaries can be used in other ways. Like the previous examples of improvident, the examples cited by OED and SOED are famous sentences. In the process of learning English, see how these awesome people use this word, and by the way, you can accumulate some famous sayings, which are beneficial and harmless even for beginners.
Many people regard the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COD) as a simplified version of the Oxford English Dictionary, but it is not. COD's writing idea is quite different from OED's, but it is deeply related to another Oxford dictionary that is easily confused with OED.
Let's move on to the next article.