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Seven of the twenty volumes of the printed version of the second edition of the OED

The Oxford English Dictionary (or OED) is a dictionary. It is published by the Oxford University Press in England, and is the largest English dictionary.

It traces (or follows in detail) the historical development of the English language, and is a resource to writers and scholars. It describes how the language has been used.

The second edition came to 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, published in 1989. Number of main entries is 231,100 and number of main entries for out-of -date words is 47,100.