The OED is so long that even native English speakers are very few people who can refer to it regularly. The editors who wrote the OED were also aware of this, and began simplification work before the OED was completed.

The first simplification result is Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, or SOED for short. SOED's goal is to "present all the functions of OED in the smallest possible space" and to "select the most essential parts of OED's vast database."

The editors of SOED have almost completely preserved all the historical explanations of all the main vocabulary in OED, but have streamlined each explanation as much as possible and greatly reduced the example sentence quotations, from 2.4 million examples in OED to 80,000. Multiple. At the same time, SOED no longer lists the earliest historical data for each word's meaning as OED does, but only uses abbreviations after each word's meaning to indicate the approximate age of the word's meaning. For example, L15 represents Late 15th Century (1400-1429), and LME represents Late Middle English.

Although it is called Shorter, it is only relative to OED. Because it still includes almost all the more than 500,000 words in the history of English, SOED is inevitably still a 3804-page tome. But it is still much simpler than the OED and easier to update. Compared with the OED, which takes sixty years to update one edition, SOED is already in its sixth edition.

Starting with the fourth edition, SOED has eliminated all Old English words used only before 1700, unless the word was used by famous writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, or the 1611 King James Version. Bible used. It is worth mentioning that the 1611 King James Version of the Bible only used more than 8,000 common words in order for ordinary people to understand it, which had a great influence on later generations of English literature.

As the version is updated, SOED editors also continuously update the entries, word meanings and representative examples. Especially examples, because they no longer need to bear the task of marking dates and can keep pace with the times. For example, the example sentence of "improvent" in OED is still the work of British writers such as Samuel Daniel in the 16th and 17th centuries; but in the fifth edition of SOED, it has been replaced by Churchill's speech: Parliament in its youth was eager for war, improvident in preparation, and resentful in paying for it.

There are also examples from the books of Joyce Carol Oates, a New York writer who is still alive and has won the O. Henry Award and the National Book Award.

Of course, on the other hand, such a revision is also to form a certain difference from OED, otherwise SOED can only survive in the shadow of OED. Especially with the improvement of printing technology, Oxford published a reduced version of OED in 1971, which was comparable to SOED in terms of price and "portability" (of course, a magnifying glass is still essential). Adjustments like SOED can be regarded as changes for survival.

For students who are interested in collecting dictionaries, the price of SOED is much more affordable. The price of a new book is about $100, and you can also find a large number of second-hand books online for about $40.

Like the OED, the SOED also has an electronic version. It has to be said that although these publishing houses are unrivaled in making dictionaries, the electronic versions they produce are often criticized for their slow updates, simple functions, and not even good-looking interfaces.

So much so that goldendict specifically appealed on the official website: You publishers might as well just concentrate on the content, leave the query process to us, and you can just collect the money as usual. Of course, cold publishing houses like Oxford will simply ignore these common people.

Whether it is OED or SOED, because of their big names, people always feel hopeful and intimidated. Especially for non-native speakers, unless you are an English major, or even specialize in English history, you generally do not have access to such a professional dictionary.

However, these two dictionaries can be used in other ways. Just like the previous example of improvident, the example sentences quoted by OED and SOED are all famous sentences. In the process of learning English, look at how these masters use this word, and by the way, you can also accumulate some famous quotes. Even for novices, it is of great benefit and no harm.

Many people regard the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COD) as a more simplified version of the OED, but this is not the case. The writing idea of ??COD is very different from that of OED. Instead, it has a deep connection with another Oxford dictionary that is easily confused with OED.

Let’s continue with the next article.