The OED's current format

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:47:45AM -0400, George Thompson wrote:
>
> I wanted to check the word "over" used as a noun.  I selected "Headword"
> and Noun, then "Lemma" and Noun, but neither gave me simply the entries for
> "over" as a noun by itself.  Headword gave me 140+ entries, as I recall,
> and made me march through 4 or 5 screens to get to  Over, noun, 1 and Over,
> noun, 3, (but no Over, noun, 2, which evidently was cancelled due to lack
> of interest).  Lemma gave me 170+ matches.

If you're looking for an actual headword, you should just use the
regular search box, not the advanced search. The default results will
be the headword list, and you can take your pick of _over_s. BTW _over_
n.(2) is part of "_over_ adj. (and n.(2))".

> I also very much miss the outline in roman and arabic numerals and capital
> and lower case letters, when trying to skim a complex entry.  Has this been
> done away with entirely, or merely hidden away?

It's been done away with. Hardly anyone used it, and those that did,
complained about how useless it was. You can, however, click the "View
as: Outline" link, which will hide all the quotations, which does speed
up the skimming of big entries.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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