No other language has anything even remotely approaching it in scope. Because of its existence, more is known about the history of English than any other language in the world.
The OED confirmed a paradox that Webster had brought to light decades earlier—namely, that although readers will appear to treat a dictionary with the utmost respect, they will generally ignore anything in it that doesn’t suit their tastes. The OED, for instance, has always insisted on -ize spellings for words such as characterize, itemize, and the like, and yet almost nowhere in England, apart from the pages of The Times newspaper (and not always there) are they observed. The British still spell almost all such words with -ise endings and thus enjoy a consistency with words such as advertise, merchandise, and surprise that we in America fail to achieve. But perhaps the most notable of all the OED’s minor quirks is its insistence that Shakespeare should be spelled Shakspere. After explaining at some length why this is the only correct spelling, it grudgingly acknowledges that the commonest spelling “is perh. Shakespeare.” (To which we might add, it cert. is.)
In the spring of 1989, a second edition of the dictionary was issued, containing certain modifications, such as the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet instead of Murray’s own quirky system. It comprised the original twelve volumes, plus four vast supplements issued between 1972 and 1989. Now sprawling over twenty volumes, the updated dictionary is a third bigger than its predecessor, with 615,000 entries, 2,412,000 supporting quotations, almost 60 million words of exposition, and about 350 million keystrokes of text (or one for each native speaker of English in the world). No other language has anything even remotely approaching it in scope. Because of its existence, more is known about the history of English than any other language in the world.
