Major Update For OED Science Fiction Project

ColdChrist writes "The Oxford English Dictionary Science Fiction project was last reported on here back in March 2004. The site has been redesigned and relaunched; the biggest change is that the OED's database of citations of SF words is now made (mostly) available via the website. The OED (a nonprofit organization) does not usually make its work available in this way, but OED has agreed to publicly open up this part of its database to acknowledge the great contribution volunteers have made to this project. That means that if you contribute a cite, it's viewable by everyone; see here for more details. Also, quite a few more words are being added from an internal pending list."

Comments

hoo boy

[aendeuryu]

I grok the pain his webserver is going to feel.

I think its time for...

[dj245]

Google Dictionary. Coming soon from a Google Labs near you. With all the dictionaries out there, Urbandictionary, Technical dictionaries, Oxford English, Acronym dictionaries, and now this SF dictionary, its time for a good way to search them.

Damn

[Yeshua]

How are we going to maintain our separation from society (or should I say elitism) if anyone can just look up what the hell we mean??

Re:OED is not ready for /.

[jephthah]

and to top it off, they neglected to include Vulcan, Klingon, Romulan, or even Elvish in their multi-lingual Page Not Found notices...

Wiktionary

[PxM]

If Google continues to support Wikipedia or even acquire it, then they might increase the support for Wiktionary. However, the answers.com thing they have set up is pretty nice since it brings a bunch of dictionary and similar references together.

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Re:Oxford?

[jd]

Oxford English Dictionary is printed, IIRC, by the Oxford University Press. British Universities have to walk a very careful line, when it comes to money, as they are considered in the same bracket as "charitable organizations" and "non-profit".

Typically a University publishing house will charge for time, materials and other assorted costs, but not significantly more. Now, when you consider that these places don't have the kind of turnover of, say, Harper-Collins, O'Reilley, Haigue & Hochland, etc, but will need paper and printing systems of comparable or superior quality, it's clear that those costs are going to add up fast.

There's also the matter that nobody cares that much if there's a whole load of typos in a college textbook - students are supposed to know what's meant, but a LOT more people are going to kick up a fuss if there's any typos anywhere in the Complete OED. That means you've got to get a small army of proofreaders. That probably adds to the costs, somewhat.