English Dialect Dictionary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) is a dictionary of English language dialects, compiled by Joseph Wright.
The English dialect dictionary, being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years; founded on the publications of the English Dialect Society and on a large amount of material never before printed was published by Oxford University Press in 6 volumes between 1898 and 1905. Its compilation and printing was funded privately by Joseph Wright, a self-taught philologist at the University of Oxford.
Due to the scale of the work – 70,000 entries – and the period in which the information was gathered, it is regarded as a standard work in the historical study of dialect. A second edition was made and ran to 36 volumes, but no publisher was ever found for this. The 36 volumes are only available at Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford; no copies have ever been made.
A project to digitise the EDD is underway at Innsbruck University Library. A partial scanned version of the work made by University of Toronto Library is currently available through the Internet Archive.
