ABSTRACT
That the NED was fundamentally an ethnocentric dictionary, structured around a British imperialist view of the world, is not particularly surprising given the period and context in which it was compiled. Nor is it particularly surprising that it incorporated many overseas words and presented them within a structure in which they appeared peripheral to the British core of the language. It seems unlikely, however, that the compilers of the NED had any particular policy towards the international dimensions of the language. Indeed, the documents that surround the production of the dictionary are characterised by their silence on the subject. For the lexicographers of the day, English as an international language simply did not exist. Although the OED defined a set of structures for its description, systematic coverage of English in the world in the dictionary is a phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century.
