Etymology Project, Bibliography

Most of the Print item in the list below are located in the Stacks of Helmke Library, on the Fourth Floor. You must go there to use them. Touching these books is a course requirement. Once you find the are they are shelved in you will notice lots of other dictionaries. Touch these as well and open them up and see if they have anything to teach you.

All electronic items are hyperlinked below. If you are working off campus, you'll be ask to provide your PFW log-in info to access these resources. Let me know if you have any trouble.

Note the (parenthetical) short titles following each of the titles. Feel free to use these throughout your write-up in lieu of longer titles or bibliography.

e.g., “Both OED and W3 contain long entries on piss, while AHD’s is surprisingly short.”

A. Starting Point Dictionaries

ALL PROJECTS MUST START WITH THESE TWO RESOURCES

A.1. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

A. 2. Webster's third new international dictionary of the English language, unabridged (W3)

Gove, Philip Babcock, 1902-1972.

PE1625 .W36 1971

B. Additional Reputable Dictionaries:

B.1. The American heritage dictionary of the English language (AHD)

PE1628 .A623 199

B.2. Random House Webster's unabridged dictionary (RH)

PE1625 .R3 1996

B.3. The Chambers Dictionary (Chambers)

PE1628 .C41745 1993

C. Dictionary of Usage:

C.1. The Merriam-Webster dictionary of English usage (MWUsage)

PE1625 .M44

D. Historical Dictionaries:

D.1. A dictionary of the English language (Samuel Johnson 1709-1784)

Facsimile (on Archive.org) Vol 1 Vol 2

Searchable version

D.2. An American dictionary of the English language (Noah)

Webster, Noah, 1758-1843.

PE 1625 .W3 1828ab v.1 ; v. 2

E. Dictionaries of Slang and Swearing:

E.1. Slang and its analogues [by] J. S. Farmer & W. E. Henley. (Farmer)

PE 3721 .F4 1970

E.2. The new Partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional English (Partridge)

PE3721 .P251 2006 (2 vols)

E.3. An encyclopedia of swearing by Geoffrey Hughes (Hughes)

PE3724.O3 H84 2006

E.4. Dictionary of contemporary slang [electronic resource] / Tony Thorne. (Thorne)

E.5. Rawson's wicked words [electronic resource] (Rawson)

F. Purely Electronic Resources:

F1. Wikipedia

F2. Snopes

F3. Urban Dictionary

F4. Wordnik

F5. Online Etymological Dictionary *****BE VERY CAREFUL******

This website is essentially the work of an intelligent human who knows how to read then paraphrase the OED. That is to say, he has done 1000 projects just like you are going to be doing. This website is very easy to “accidentally” plagiarize. If I were you I would avoid looking at it until you are done your project.