OED first edition

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 02:43:16PM -0400, James A. Landau wrote:
> >From the review of the OED2 CD-ROM in the December 1993 _Byte_ magazine, page
> 49 column 2:
>
> "The Oxford English Dictionary, or OED, was first printed as 125 separate
> volumes, from 1884 to 1928."

As others have pointed out, this should read "fascicles".

There's a detailed and useful discussion of the printing history of
the OED by Jenny McMorris, the OED Archivist, printed as Appendix I
of Lynda Mugglestone's _Lexicography and the OED._ It's complicated,
but the OED was issued in various types of small publications, including
fascicles, parts, and volumes. The word "fascicle" is used in a broad
way to refer to both fascicles proper and parts.