Tolkien's first job, on returning home from World War I, was as an assistant on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary. He later said that he had "learned more in those two years than in any other equal part of his life." The Ring of Words reveals how his professional work on the OED influenced Tolkien's creative use of language in his fictional world.
Here three senior editors of the OED offer an intriguing exploration of Tolkien's career as a lexicographer and illuminate his creativity as a word user and word creator. The centerpiece of the book is a wonderful collection of "word studies" which will delight the heart of Ring fans and word lovers everywhere. The editors look at the origin of such Tolkienesque words as "hobbit," "mithril, "Smeagol," "Ent," "halfling," and "worm" (meaning "dragon"). Readers discover that a word such as "mathom" (anything a hobbit had no immediate use for, but was unwilling to throw away) was actually common in Old English, but that "mithril," on the other hand, is a complete invention (and the first "Elven" word to have an entry in the OED). And fans of Harry Potter will be surprised to find that "Dumbledore" (the name of Hogwart's headmaster) was a word used by Tolkien and many others (it is a dialect word meaning "bumblebee").
Few novelists have found so much of their creative inspiration in the shapes and histories of words. Presenting archival material not found anywhere else, The Ring of Words offers a fresh and unexplored angle on the literary achievements of one of the world's most famous and best-loved writers.

This is the first of three volumes in a major series supplementing the acclaimed Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Each volume contains 3,000 new words and meanings presented in the style of the OED. representing a variety of work-in-progress from across the alphabetical range, covering words and meanings that have recently entered the language as well as the results of further research on items already included.

With over 12,000 illustrative quotations showing the evolution of each word or meaning, these volumes are not only testimony to the continual development of our living language, but also a compelling browse.

Words from around the world: Britain: assisted place, steaming North America: metroplex, statie Australia: boatie, rego New Zealand: patete, spiker South Africa: Broederbond, patha patha Caribbean: ping-wing, Ras Wide coverage of subjects: Politics: Broad Left Medicine: burstectomy Broadcasting: squarial Computing: Unix Natural History: nectarivore Literature: narratology Science: quasicrystal, bijection Ecology: biohazardous Sport: bases-loaded, forkball New loan-words: shuriken (Japanese) Shoah (Hebrew) pisteur (French) norteamericano (Spanish) Details of first appearance: best boy (1937) Pasionara (1969) prodrug (1968) muesli belt (1981) sous vide (1986.

The second in a major series of volumes supplementing the Second Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, OED Additions Volume 2 contains, 3,000 new words and meanings presented in OED style, and represents work-in-progress from across the alphabetic range. Its contents include: 3,000 new words and senses; cumulative index of volumes 1 and 2; world coverage of English including the UK (exclusion order), North America (enrollee), and Australia (grummet), a wide variety of subjects, including science (superstring), literary theory (epiphanic), and sport (strokeless); all registers of English, including colloquial (everyplace) and slang (dweeb); full historical documentation, and dates of first appearance.

The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar is a straightforward and accessible A-Z guide to the diverse and often complex terminology of English grammar. It contains over 1,600 entries with clear and concise definitions, enhanced by numerous example sentences, as well as relevant quotations from the scholarly literature of the field. This second edition is written and edited by Professor Bas Aarts of University College London, writer of the acclaimed Oxford Modern English Grammar. It has been fully revised and updated, with particular attention paid to refreshing the example sentences included within the text. There are over 150 new entries that cover current terminology which has arisen since the publication of the first edition, and there are also new entries on the most important English grammars published since the start of the 20th century. Hundreds of new cross-references enhance the user-friendly nature of the text, and the list of works cited has been thoroughly updated to reflect the current state of the field. A short appendix of web links has been added. All in all, this Dictionary is an invaluable guide to English grammar for all students and teachers of the subject, as well as all those with an informed interest in the English language.

The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. The OED has a unique historical focus. Accompanying each definition is a chronologically arranged group of quotations that trace the usage of words, and show the contexts in which they can be used. The quotations are drawn from a huge variety of international sources - literary, scholarly, technical, popular - and represent authors as disparate as Geoffrey Chaucer and Erica Jong, William Shakespeare and Raymond Chandler, Charles Darwin and John Le Carré. In all, nearly 2.5 million quotations can be found in the OED. Other features distinguishing the entries in the Dictionary are authoritative definitions of over 500,000 words; detailed information on pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet; listings of variant spellings used throughout each word's history; extensive treatment of etymology; and details of area of usage and of any regional characteristics (including geographical origins).