This dictionary is based upon the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966), compiled by C. T. Onions with the assistance of G. W. S. Friedrichsen and R. W. Burchfield. It was the late Dr Friedrichsen who first produced a draft for a concise version of that dictionary, and the present editor took over the work in 1977. In general, the book remains faithful to Dr Friedrichsen’s plan, although a good many changes of detail and of a broader kind have been made, for which the present editor is alone accountable.

The intention is that each entry should give a concise statement of the route by which its headword entered the English language, together with, where appropriate, a brief account of its development in English.

In each case, the headword is followed by a figure in Roman numerals indicating the century in which the word is first recorded in English, or if definitions are provided these are followed by figures in Roman numerals indicating the centuries in which the various senses are first evidenced. In the case of words or senses recorded from the Old English period (c.7OO-c.llO0), however, these are labelled simply ‘OE.’ (or at most ‘late OE.’), since the nature of the surviving materials usually makes any closer dating impracticable.

Definitions have not been provided for words whose senses have undergone no major change in English, and whose meanings are likely to be readily ascertainable by most readers. The same practice has been adopted in the case ofmany technical and scientific words, whose senses may be quickly discovered by recourse to a small English dic¬ tionary. No attempt has been made to record all the modern senses of words for which definitions are provided, since these are frequently of secondary importance in tracing the etymology and history of the words in question.

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