This was the first of twelve volumes of the most masterly and ambitious philological exercise ever undertaken, eventually redubbed the Oxford English Dictionary. The intention was to record every word used in English since 1150 and to trace it back through all its shifting meanings, spellings, and uses to its earliest recorded appearance. There was to be at least one citation for each century of its existence and at least one for each slight change of meaning. To achieve this, almost every significant piece of English literature from the last 7½ centuries would have to be not so much read as
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This led me on a tangent and I ended up reading Simon Winchester's excellent book on the OED.
