Oxford English Dictionary (2024)

FAQs

How reliable is the Oxford English Dictionary? ›

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely accepted as the most complete record of the English language ever assembled. Unlike typical language dictionaries, which only define words in terms of their current uses and meanings, the OED is a historical dictionary.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and usage of 500,000 words and phrases past and present, from across the English-speaking world.

/ɪˈnʌf/ ​used before plural or uncountable nouns to mean 'as many or as much as somebody needs or wants' synonym sufficient. Have you made enough copies? Is there enough room for me?

Oxford Dictionary has 273,000 headwords; 171,476 of them being in current use, 47,156 being obsolete words and around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. The dictionary contains 157,000 combinations and derivatives, and 169,000 phrases and combinations, making a total of over 600,000 word-forms.

However, Merriam-Webster is the largest and most reputable of the U.S. dictionary publishers, regardless of the type of dictionary (general, geographical, biographical, or a thesaurus). Some of the additional reliable American publishers are Oxford University Press, Random House, Macmillan, and American Heritage.

While the Oxford English Dictionary gives you the meaning of the word as well as its origin, the Cambridge Dictionary gives a more practical explanation along with an example of how to use the word in a sentence.

Enough is a determiner, a pronoun or an adverb. We use enough to mean 'as much as we need or want'.

enough comes after adjectives and adverbs. I'm not tall enough to reach the top shelf. Your marks are good enough to study engineering at university. I couldn't write quickly enough and I ran out of time.

The Early English "genōg" is connected with other Germanic dialects' words for "enough," like the Old High German "ginuog" and the Gothic "ganohs."

: no longer in use or no longer useful. an obsolete word. b. : of a kind or style no longer current : old-fashioned.

What is the richest language in the world? ›

It is clear that Arabic is the basis for hundreds of words across dozens of languages. As we continue to examine why it may be the richest language in words, let us take a look at the origin of the Arabic language.

Merriam-Webster: America's Most Trusted Dictionary.

It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world.

The Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries have long been considered as the two most credible and trustworthy for British English. In terms of popularity, the Oxford dictionary is the more popular of the two in the UK and is generally cited as the ultimate authority on the language.

The New Oxford American Dictionary is the American version of the Oxford Dictionary of English, with substantial editing and uses a diacritical respelling scheme rather than the IPA system.

The attraction of the Oxford Dictionary of English is that it has a good selection of proper nouns, though not as many as the old Collins, and has a clearer presentation of words and phrases than Chambers.