The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (officially titled The Concise Oxford Dictionary until 2002, and widely abbreviated COD) is probably the best-known of the 'smaller' Oxford dictionaries. The latest edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary contains over 240,000 entries and 1,728 pages (concise only compared to the OED at over 21,000 pages). Its twelfth edition, published in 2011, is used by the United Nations as the current authority for spellings in documents written in the English language for international use. It is available free on the web and as an electronic eBook for a variety of handheld device platforms. In addition to providing information for general use, it documents local variations such as U.S. and U.K. usage.
It was started as a derivative of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), although section S–Z had to be written before the Oxford English Dictionary reached that stage. However, the eleventh edition was based on the Oxford Dictionary of English (also known as the NODE) rather than the OED. The most recent edition is the 12th edition, published in 2011.
Until 2000, it was the dictionary used on the game show Countdown.
Read more about Concise Oxford English Dictionary: Editions, 2011 Revised 11th Edition
Famous quotes containing the words oxford, english and/or dictionary:
“I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all ... like an opera.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“He had first discovered a propensity for savagery in the acrid lavatories of a minor English public school where he used to press the heads of the new boys into the ceramic bowl and pull the flush upon them to drown their gurgling protests.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“I am hungry and you give me
a dictionary to decipher.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)