Historical Thesaurus of English
HTE: Historical Thesaurus of English
HTOED: Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
Project email address: arts-thesauri@glasgow.ac.uk
The Historical Thesaurus of English project at the University of Glasgow displays the vocabulary of English from Old English to the present arranged in detailed semantic categories. It is based on the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, supplemented by materials from A Thesaurus of Old English (Roberts and Kay 2000). It was published in two volumes as the Historical Thesaurus of the OED by Oxford University Press on October 22, 2009, and is available on the OUP website alongside the electronic OED. Further details of HTOED are available at http://www.oup.com/online/ht/. The Introduction to the printed volumes contains a full account of the development of the project. Selected articles by members of the team are available from the Glasgow University Library Enlighten site.
The Historical Thesaurus of English is a unique resource which allows users to examine the history of the English vocabulary in a new way. It was announced to the world by the late Professor Michael Samuels in 1965 and completed in 2008. It contains almost 800,000 meanings arranged in semantic categories, enabling users to examine the range of vocabulary employed to describe an object or concept over the years, or to look more specifically at the vocabulary available in a particular period or to a particular author. It is currently being used in the AHRC-funded Mapping Metaphor project.
Funding for the Historical Thesaurus project was received from:
Arts and Humanities Research Board 2000-3
Arts and Humanities Research Council ICT Strategy Fund 2005-6
Axe-Houghton Foundation 1978, 1980-1981
British Academy 1975-2004
Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland 1998
Leverhulme Trust 1969-1975, 1981-1983, 1994-1997
Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation 1977
Manpower Services Commission 1981-1988
Modern Humanities Research Association 1986
In addition to the University of Glasgow, the following universities supported the project through the work of their staff: Brock University, Ontario; Universities of Dusseldorf, Munich, London, Regensburg, Regina.
Further information and links to projects.