O.E.D. Ranked
O.E.D. Ranked is a podcast which undertakes the ambitious and unconventional task of ranking almost every single word in the Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition CD-ROM Version 4.0, which includes 500,000 words with 2.5 million source quotations, along with 7,000 new words and meanings. It includes Vocabulary from OED 2nd Edition as well as all 3 Additions volumes. The CD-Rom Supports Windows 2000-7 and Mac OS X 10.4–10.5. It is a flash-based dictionary. They did not seem to specifiy, but it also runs on Windows XP.
The Official Rankings
| S | A | B | C | F |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Excluditary Concerns
Some words will be excluded from the rankings on basis which will be collated in this section of the wiki.
Obsolete words may be excluded from ranking unless they are cool, in which case they are ranked and therefore made adsolete.
If a word's definition just sort of tells you to see a different word and nothing else, it is excluded from ranking.
Draft Entries
Some entries in the OED2ECDV4.0 are labeled as "Draft Entries," denoting entries that, as of the CD-ROM's release in June of 2009, were still to be considered for entry into the O.E.D. proper.
Some entries have Draft entries as addendums at the bottom of the definition proper. These are considered a part of the main entry and not drafts.
Some Draft Entries may be dismissed out of hand for being too similar to other Draft Entries, or for being otherwise objectively irrelevant for inclusion.
With the completion of each letter set, a tournament occurs which pits all of the selected Draft Entries from that letter against each other.
Ed. Note: In the early part of the 2000's it would appear the O.E.D. was really experimenting with adding numbers into the mix.
| Draft Date | Word | Definition | Draft Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2004 | 0898 number, n. Brit. | A U.K. telephone number with the prefix 0898 offering services (esp. chat lines) for which callers are charged at a premium rate; (in extended use) any premium-rate telephone service, esp. a chat line offering sexual content. | |
| June 2004 | 101, a. orig. and chiefly U.S. | as postmodifier: designating an introductory course at U.S. colleges or universities in the subject specified. In extended use (chiefly humorous): designating the basic or elementary facts or knowledge associated with the field or subject specified. | |
| September 2003 | 1984, n. | A totalitarian society in which propaganda and intensive surveillance techniques are used to subjugate the population. Hence allusively: a society in which personal freedom is (thought to be) similarly curtailed or controlled. |