Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

The _Collegiate Eleventh Edition_ has the inception dates
both in the hard copy and on the CD-ROM.  

There's a URL for an online version of the eleventh
_Collegiate_, but it's accessible to only people who
subscribe or who have bought the print edition in the
previous twelve months.  I qualify under the latter
condition, but I've lost track of my username and password
for it.  If I come across it before the year is out, I'll
see if the online version has retained the dates.

Misleading maybe, but I doubt that they would drop a feature
because a run-of-the mill user would find it unimportant.  I
would expect more users than not to find the etymologies
unimportant, but they're there for those who find them
useful.

Oxford University Press in the preface to the _New Shorter
Oxford English Dictionary_ avoid calling it a "Fourth
Edition to emphasize the fact that while it's "a replacement
for the third edition of the _Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary_", it's "not a direct revision of its text".
They go on to say

  Every entry has been written afresh, taking into
  account the linguistic evidence of the Dictionary
  Department's extensive quotation files and computer
  databases.

Now I learn that they have a new release that they are
calling the "Fifth Edition".  This leaves me wondering if
*they* have ever departed from their policy of not calling
_NSOED_ the "Fourth Edition".  I do see that there are lots
of mentions of it by others on the Web.

Random House dictionaries in most cases have the dates in
five-year periods, but sometimes the period is longer,
presumably reflecting lack of more precise knowledge.  For
example, under "transistor", the etymology is

  [1945-50; TRANS(FER) + (RES)ISTOR]

while under "people" it's

  [1225-75; ME peple < AF poeple, OF pueple < L populus.  
  See POPULAR]

Which they were.