The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form
Encyclopedia
The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form (The OEDILF) is an open collaborative project to compile an English dictionary whose entries all take the form of limericks
. The project was originally called the "Oxford English Dictionary in Limerick Form", but the OED’s legal department advised against it. The site, launched in August 2004, has attracted over a thousand writers from around the world, many of whom are active at any particular time. Together these writers have submitted more than 74,000 limericks on over 61,000 different words, phrases, and names (as of October 2011) — believed to be the largest corpus of original limericks ever produced. The project progresses alphabetically, and is currently accepting only those words beginning with the letters Aa- through El-. The entire project is expected to take decades before being considered complete. An estimated completion date was added in 2011, which currently claims that 3rd March, 2037, will be the day they finally finish. Other OEDILFers believe that, due to the nature of our malleable language, they will merely be done with a "first edition" at that time and will move on to work on filling in all the meanings (many words have more than one) they may have omitted and all of the new words coined during the writing of this first edition.
The OEDILF has been featured on National Public Radio in the U.S., on BBC Radio 4 in the UK, CBC radio in Canada, and in the pages of the Washington Post, the Glasgow Herald, and various other newspapers. It was also named one of PC Magazine's Top 99 Undiscovered Websites of 2006.
Limerick (poetry)
A limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in five-line or meter with a strict rhyme scheme , which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century...
. The project was originally called the "Oxford English Dictionary in Limerick Form", but the OED’s legal department advised against it. The site, launched in August 2004, has attracted over a thousand writers from around the world, many of whom are active at any particular time. Together these writers have submitted more than 74,000 limericks on over 61,000 different words, phrases, and names (as of October 2011) — believed to be the largest corpus of original limericks ever produced. The project progresses alphabetically, and is currently accepting only those words beginning with the letters Aa- through El-. The entire project is expected to take decades before being considered complete. An estimated completion date was added in 2011, which currently claims that 3rd March, 2037, will be the day they finally finish. Other OEDILFers believe that, due to the nature of our malleable language, they will merely be done with a "first edition" at that time and will move on to work on filling in all the meanings (many words have more than one) they may have omitted and all of the new words coined during the writing of this first edition.
The OEDILF has been featured on National Public Radio in the U.S., on BBC Radio 4 in the UK, CBC radio in Canada, and in the pages of the Washington Post, the Glasgow Herald, and various other newspapers. It was also named one of PC Magazine's Top 99 Undiscovered Websites of 2006.
External links
- The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form
- PC Magazine's Top 99 Undiscovered Websites of 2006
- The Herald, Glasgow, 20 January 2007
- Word of Mouth, BBC Radio 4, 9 May 2006
- Weekend Edition, NPR, 25 December 2004
- Washington Post Style Invitational contests in August 2004, August 2005, August 2006, August 2007 August 2008
- As it Happens CBC Radio interview, 23 December 2008