English Dictionary

[AngloScot]

What qualifies a word to be listed in the Oxford English Dictionary?

[jenstar]

The basic answer is that the Oxford University Press people do a lot of reading and if a word crops up enough in a wide enough variety of publications, then it goes in. This page will tell you a bit more: http://www.oed.com/about/writing/

[pinus]

A representative of OUP recently pointed out in a television programme that words are never removed from the OED

[female19]

in a word popularity