Die auf 15 Bande veranschlagte Neubearbeitung des Deutschen Fremdwoerterbuchs verzeichnet den Kernbereich der in der deutschen Standardsprache fest verankerten Fremdwoerter und Fremdwortfamilien in ihrer historischen Entwicklung von ca. 1450 bis zur unmittelbaren Gegenwart. Das Woerterbuch ist ein Standardwerk zur deutschen Sprache der Gegenwart.

The Early New High German Dictionary is an alphabetically-ordered sense dictionary of the varieties of High German from the 14th to 17th century. Its entries are arranged as follows: Each headword is followed by concise information on the inflectional morphology and (in the case of etymologically isolated words or words that are difficult to classify) brief references to the etymology. This is followed by the core of each entry, namely, the explanation of the various senses of a word, which have been numbered. References to time, region and text type provide important information about the dimensions in which each sense of a word was used. The cumulative naming of semantically-related words and typical syntagmatic contexts provide insight into the structural, lexical correlations. A detailed block of examples per sense demonstrates the word in its original usage.