Oxford English Dictionary Took 70 Years to Complete

What began as a project to simply fill the gaps in existing dictionaries soon spiraled into one of the most ambitious scholarly undertakings in history. The Philological Society of London, which initiated the effort, quickly realized that a mere supplement wouldn't suffice. They pivoted to a revolutionary new goal: to create a complete historical record of every word in the English language. This meant not just defining a word, but tracing its entire life—from its earliest known appearance to its shifts in meaning over centuries, all backed by evidence from published works. This radical change in scope from a simple list to a comprehensive biography of the language is the core reason the timeline exploded from a decade to seven decades.

To achieve this monumental task in a pre-digital age, the editors pioneered a remarkable system of academic crowdsourcing. An open appeal was made to the public, asking volunteer readers to scour books and send in quotations on small paper slips, noting the word, its source, and the date. Millions of these slips poured in from across the English-speaking world, sent to the lead editor, James Murray, who worked from a corrugated iron shed in his garden known as the "Scriptorium." He and his small team then had to sort this immense paper database and assemble the history for each entry. The final result was not just a dictionary, but a testament to a global, multi-generational collaboration.