Wednesday, 10 September 2014

On the OED

The second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary appeared in 1989, published in 20 volumes.

 For the first time there was no attempt to start each volume on letter boundaries, so each volume was roughly equal in size.

The titles of each volume are as follows:

A
B.B.C.
Cham
Creel
Dvandva
Follow
Hat
Interval
Look
Moul
Ow
Poise
Quemadero
Rob
Ser
Soot
Su
Thru
Unemancipated and
Wave.


Pity the letters E, G, J, K N, V, X, Y and Z, who fail entirely to make an impression on the twenty spines.  But let's all honour S, with its 3 volumes (and no doubt with early appearances in Rob).

The list above offers an Oulipian challenge - perhaps a poem incorporating all twenty words/non words?

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