ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on how Early English Books Online-Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) and Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) have informed her work on Cymbeline's words, convincing her along the way that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) needs to revise its historical collation as well as some of its claims for Shakespeare's coinages. Shakespeare's coinages do not always withstand the scrutiny afforded by digital resources. Citing the relevant meaning in the OED was sufficient because the readers could find other historical uses in the dictionary. In a long note published in Shakespeare Quarterly, Timothy Billings refers to what Barbara Mowat once described to him in conversation as "the OED loop". The loop begins when an annotation to a Shakespearean text influences an entry in the OED, which in turn affects subsequent Shakespeare editions.
