Words at the start of the Q

The first entry I worked on when I joined the editorial staff of the Supplement to the OED back in 1976 was the entry for queen, and so (now that we are republishing queen in the current batch of revised and updated words) I was interested to see how the entry had changed over the thirty-one years since then.

Of course we weren’t revising the entry in full in 1976, but only updating the original OED entry (first published in 1902) with new material drawn principally from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As we revised the entire entry this time round we found many areas which needed change: we have added a further four new meanings and two new compounds (queen-elect and queen's china), and now have 77 (rather than 22) orthographic variants of queen; a new entry structure distinguishing senses referring to a woman from other extended uses; substantial changes to definitions; earlier documentary evidence provided for over half of the subsenses and compounds; later evidence for 91% of the subsenses, and earlier evidence for 64%. Along with the other changes made to the entry, this represents a substantially new view of our understanding of the word queen over the centuries since it entered English.

There are senses which were originally first recorded in the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14) which can now be shown to date from the time of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and Mary I (1553-8), though at present we have been unable to find the Queen of Spain fritillary any earlier than 1775; queen-size goods (especially beds: the term appears to have originated in North America) tumble back from 1959 to 1906; the affectionate term of address 'Queen Mum' moves back from 1960 to 1954, a year after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

The current publication batch runs from purpress 'to commit purpresture; to enclose or encroach upon land illegally' to quit shilling 'a sum of money spent by a prisoner in celebration of his or her acquittal'. Published on 13 December 2007, it contains 2,508 entries, bringing the total number of main entries in the OED to 261,720. The dictionary's 591,193 lemmas (roughly, words and expressions which are included in the dictionary) are now illustrated by 2,864,390 quotations and represent 726,451 different meanings.

The list of some of the more significant words included in this release is perhaps somewhat shorter than usual:

purse, pursue, pursuit, push, put, puzzle, pyramid, python, quadrant, qualification, qualify, qualitative, quality, quantity, quarrel, quarry, quarter, queen, queer, query, quest, question, queue, quibble, quick, quid, quiet, quiff, quilt, quince, quintessence, quip, quirk, quit, quite.

This is partially because of the presence of the verb to put, which dominates the range. In its revised form it (temporarily?) takes its place as the largest entry in the OED, supplanting make, which itself took over from set in 2000. Other large entries here include quarter, quiet, and push. The smallest entry in the current range is the verb to putlog, which seems to have enjoyed a quiet life since OED1. Alongside the solid trail to the end of P we have a slightly quirkier set of words in Q (quibble, quiff, quip, quintessence), as well as quality, quantity, and over 200 main entries beginning with quad-.

Updating revised entries

In June of this year we noted that, following the switch to our new editorial computer system and the conversion of the dictionary data from SGML to XML, we had been able to republish updated versions of revised entries from necial to proteose (see Restructuring of compounds and phrases on OED Online). I'm now glad to be able to report that the present release includes all updated versions of entries revised to date, from M (the alphabetical point at which revision started). This means that any amendments to entries which we have applied to the database in the revised range are now published. These are often bibliographical improvements, but also include a number of earlier attestations and other alterations.

Typical changes include: middle class (antedating from 1756 to 1745), muller verb 4 (alteration to etymology), myrianthous (labelling change), and narrowcast verb (new sense and earlier quotation).