History of the OED (forwarded)

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 09:15:41PM -0400, Sam Clements wrote:
> I don't mean this in a snippy way, but WHY would this be a 10 year project?
> Serious question.

The two main reasons are that this is to be a serious and
extensive academic history of the OED, and the amount of
materials involved are extremely vast; and that Peter will be
continuing to work on OED full-time during the writing
process, which will severely limit the amount of time he can
devote to this work.

Peter is not subscribed to this list, though, so I'd suggest
that if you have serious questions about the project you
e-mail him directly. (I'm cc'ing him on this message.)

Best,

Jesse Sheidlower
OED