Pity the poor Oxford English Dictionary editor who was assigned to cover the word “run”. In the dictionary’s upcoming edition, run has some 645 use cases for the verb form alone, and its definitions run some 75 columns of type. According to Reader’s Digest, run alone took one lexicographer nine months of research to complete.

Interestingly, in the 1928 edition, the word with the most definitions was “set” (200 meanings and 32 pages). Perhaps the switch from set to run says something about changes in the pace of life over the last century. The video below offers a  run-through of just some of the many uses of this versatile word.

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion

4 Thoughts on "The Most Complicated Word in the English Language"

The Oxford English Dictionary/Dictionaries was/were once looked upon as the authority of Bringlish – British English. They defined what was right in word usage. They were ‘prescriptive’. Now all they do is record how words are used, regardless of any historic use or logic. They have become ‘descriptive’. They were once academic; now that are commercial.
They are symbolic of how the UK’s institutions have become money orientated to the point of greed.

As a former lexicographer at the OED i can tell David that the most complicated three letter word is “set”! Or was when i worked on the OED Supplements.

Incidentally the OED was always descriptive, showing all vaiants based on quotation evidence

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