pronunciation of the current words, but to furnish a biography of each
word, giving as nearly as possible the date of its birth or first
known appearance, and, in the case of an obsolete word or sense, of
its last appearance, the source from which it was actually derived,
the form and sense with which it entered the language or is first
found in it, and the successive changes of form and developments of
sense which it has since undergone. All these particulars are derived
from historical research; they are an induction of facts gathered by
the widest investigation of the written monuments of the language. For
the purposes of this historical illustration more than five millions
of extracts have been made, by two thousand volunteer Readers, from
innumerable books, representing the English literature of all ages,
and from numerous documentary records. From these, and the further
researches for which they provide a starting-point, the history of
each word is deduced and exhibited.

Since the Philological Society's scheme was propounded, several large
dictionaries have been compiled, adopting one or more of Archbishop
Trench's suggestions, and thus showing some of the minor features of
this dictionary. They have collected some of the rare and obsolete
words and senses of the past three centuries; they have attained to
greater fullness and exactness in exhibiting the current uses of
words, and especially of the many modern words which the progress of
physical science has called into being. But they leave the _history_
of the words themselves where it was when Dr. Trench pointed out the
deficiencies of existing dictionaries. And their literary
illustrations of the older words are, in too many cases, those of Dr.
Johnson, copied from dictionary to dictionary without examination or
verification, and, what is more important, without acknowledgement, so
that the reader has no warning that a given quotation is merely