OED3: policy and procedures with regard to Old English But the overwhelming majority of texts published by the society in the first twenty years of its existence were not Old but Middle English. It was precisely to provide accurate texts from which the New English Dictionary could quote that the Early English Text Society had been set up in 1864 by Murray's predecessor as editor, Frederick Furnivall. This was no small practical consideration in terms of editing time, but a further, and perhaps more decisive, practical concern was simply that reliable editions of Old English texts had not at that time been produced in sufficient numbers, and without these the work of excerption of quotations for the dictionary was rendered practically impossible. Eric Stanley (‘OED and the earlier history of English’, in Lynda Mugglestone (ed.) Lexicography & the OED (2000) 132) that had all of Old English been included in the New English Dictionary it would have resulted in an increase of about 10% in the overall size of the dictionary (or, in terms of the 20-volume OED2, an additional two volumes). In fact, the OED currently includes more than 7500 entries for which the first evidence of use is dated 1150 or earlier-in effect, a large component of the core vocabulary of English. It was to be admitted to the OED when required to illustrate the early history of words remaining in use after 1150, which in practice led to the inclusion of a very substantial amount of Old English material in OED.
The final sentence is important: Old English was to be only partially excluded from the dictionary. But to words actually included this date has no application their history is exhibited from their first appearance, however early. To do this would have involved the inclusion of an immense number of words, not merely long obsolete but also having obsolete inflexions, and thus requiring, if dealt with at all, a treatment different from that adapted to the words which survived the twelfth century… Hence we exclude all words that had become obsolete by 1150. This date has been adopted as the only natural halting-place, short of going back to the beginning, so as to include the entire Old English or ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Vocabulary. The present work aims at exhibiting the history and signification of the English words now in use, or known to have been in use since the middle of the twelfth century. St.Murray states the policy of the OED with regard to Old English very explicitly in the ‘General Explanations’ in the first volume (1888: p.xviii) of the New English Dictionary (NED): Roman occupation of Britain under Emperor Claudius (beginning of Roman rule of Britain)Īnglo-Saxon settlement (Angles, Frisians, Saxons, Jutes) of Britain begins Germanic Indo-European tribes living in parts of modern-day GermanyĬelts inhabit much of Europe, and beginning to colonize the British Islesįirst Roman raids on Britain under Julius Caesar
Proto-Indo-Europeans living in Eastern Europe and Central Asia c.6000 BCīritain cut off from continental Europe by English Channel
The selection of events is my own, and the dates are approximate in some cases, but it gives at least some idea of the time-scales involved, and puts the developments into some sort of perspective. Here is a list of important dates in the development of the English language.