It has provided a ready quarry of material for many authors of treatises and dissertations. So wide is its scope and so intensive its treatment that it has served for students, both native and foreign, as a lexicon of many languages, and, though it deals primarily with words, it is virtually an encyclopaedic treasury of information about things. There is no aspect of English linguistic history that the Dictionary has not illuminated its findings have called for the revision of many philological statements and the reconsideration of many judgements on textual matters. In 1891 a great English philologist wrote of the ‘debt’ which ‘English grammar will some day owe to the New English Dictionary’ and the debt has been mounting up ever since.
It is generally recognized that the consistent pursuit of this method has worked a revolution in the art of lexicography. Such a collection of evidence-it is represented by a selection of about 2,400,000 quotations actually printed-could form the only possible foundation for the historical treatment of every word and idiom which is the raison d’être of the work. Its basis is a collection of several millions of excerpts from literature of every period amassed by an army of readers and the editorial staff. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang. The aim of this Dictionary is to present in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. In 1897 ‘this historical dictionary of the English language’ was dutifully dedicated by the University to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and on the completion of the first edition in 1928 it was presented to His Majesty King George the Fifth. The University of Oxford has the honour, with Her Majesty’s gracious permission, of dedicating this edition of the Dictionary to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second. The editorial policies which informed each of the constituent parts of this edition are detailed in the Introduction, which also includes information on the way in which the task of bringing the parts together was accomplished. This second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary amalgamates the text of the first edition, published in twelve volumes in 1933, the Supplement, published in four volumes between 19, and approximately five thousand new words, or new senses of existing words, which have gained currency since the relevant volume of the Supplement was published.
Here you can read the full text of the Preface to the Second Edition of the OED. You can also view the original as a PDF.
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