Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary, often simply called the OED, is

an unusual dictionary because in addition to providing definitions of words, it also

really dives into the history of words. To look up a word in the online OED, click in

the Quick Search box, type in the word that you'd like to look up, and then click on the

red GO button. I'm going to look up the word "intelligence." Sometimes you'll have options

on your search results screen. I have a verb form of the word "intelligence" and a noun

form. I'm going to click on the noun form to go to the full entry with all of the complete

information about the word. Our word appears in the top of the screen, in a large font

and red letters, and it's followed by the pronunciation, both British and U.S. The British

pronunciation has a blue "play" arrow next to it; if I click on that, I can hear the audio

of the word being pronounced. [word is pronounced with British accent] Next to that is the

spelled out version of the pronunciation. If this pronunciation code doesn't make sense

to you, simply click on it to get the phonetic pronunciation. Now we start getting into the

information that the OED is so well known for. In the Forms section, we have all the

different known forms or spellings of the words that have been used over time. Each

one of these forms is accompanied by a combination of letters and/or numbers; that lets us know

when that form of the word was in use. For example, "ME-15" tells us that this form of

the word "intelligence" was in use in Middle English in the 1500s. Below that we've got

the Etymology. The etymology section traces the origin of the word and describes the way

or ways that we think the word came into the English language. Following that, we have

the first definition, like you might find in any dictionary. That's accompanied by a

list of quotes. The quotes provide evidence of this word with this definition actually

in use in print. The earliest time that we've been able to find this use of the word "intelligence"

in print is circa 1390, or approximately 1390. This quote is from an author named Gower,

and this is the title that it came from. And then we have the quote itself. We can click

on the title of the book if we want to find out more information or more quotes from this

author or from this title. The quotes are in chronological order, so words like "intelligence"

that are still in use are going to have some more modern quotes: this one is from 1992.

If the word continues to stay in use, the OED will continue to add more quotes to this

list. From there, we can move on to the second definition. Again, the second definition is

accompanied by quotes showing the word in use with that second definition. We have a

third definition and then the same thing: we have a list of chronological quotes showing

the word in use with this third definition. And it goes on from there. Scrolling back

up to the top of the screen, I wanted to point out the link to the Thesaurus. A lot of words

will have a thesaurus link and that provides you with a list of synonyms for the word.

Keep in mind the the OED is a historical dictionary, so some of these words might not seem familiar

and some of them might not be in use any more. You can click on any one of them to go and

see the entry for that word. In the middle section, we have the word we looked up in

combination with other words to form either compound words or phrases. We can click on

any of these if we would like to go and see the entry for, say, "intelligence bureau"

or "intelligence brief." On the far right side, we have a list of words. Our word is highlighted

in red. The words before or after that are the words that would appear before or after the

word "intelligence" if we were looking at a print version of the dictionary. This feature

is good if you like to browse around and try either different forms of the word or you

can use these arrows to scroll through and choose a different word altogether. The online

OED has a few other features. You can print out all the information from this entry on

"intelligence." You can also send yourself an email. That email will have a link that

will bring you back to this entry in the online OED. You can also use the citation tool. The

citation tool offers a suggested citation in either MLA or Chicago style. Select the

one you'd like. It is a suggested citation: it's computer generated so it's not always

perfect, so do check it against whatever style guide you're using. And lastly, if you'd like

to look up another word, you can always click on the OED logo to go back to the home page

or there's a Quick Search box here at the top of the page to look up a new word. If

you'd like any help using the online OED, please feel free to contact the library. You

should feel free to stop by and ask any staff members for help. Our web site has our current

hours and that's at www.siskiyous.edu/library. You can always call us: our phone number is

530-938-5331. Or you can even email us. Our email address is: library@siskiyous.edu. We're

always happy to help! Thanks for watching and happy researching!