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:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“English Bob: What I heard was that you fell off your horse, drunk, of course, and that you broke your bloody neck.
Little Bill Daggett: I heard that one myself, Bob. Hell, I even thought I was dead. ‘Til I found out it was just that I was in Nebraska.”
—David Webb Peoples, screenwriter. English Bob (Richard Harris)
“If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be “To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one’s own writings in translation.””
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)