What does that mean?

Today in Georgia History has a vocabulary work sheet. They suggest looking up the words in a dictionary. We have a dictionary that not only provides the definition but the history behind a word. The 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary in our Reference section is a treasure of information about single words.
From Amazon: The key feature of the OED, of course, is its unique historical focus. Accompanying each definition is a chronologically arranged group of quotations that illustrate the evolution of meaning from the word's first recorded usage and show the contexts in which it can be used. The quotations are drawn from a huge variety of 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 Carre. In all, nearly 2.5 million quotations--illustrating over a half-million words--can be found in the OED. [More]

The English teachers have an assignment where students must come to the physical library and use the physical OED. I bless them for this task.

The OED is available online via a subscription.  GALILEO used to offer the subscription. When the online OED was dropped, we purchased the print edition. You don't have to worry about a subscription being canceled when you own the hard copy. Stop by the North Metro campus library (Room 103) and read all about it.



-kss