CHRIS TITLEY finds there are no words to express the scale of the online Oxford English Dictionary - even though it contains 59 million of them

TOO many friends? Social life tiring you out? The perfect solution is to subscribe to the online Oxford English Dictionary. Soon, you'll be boring everyone with your word-power. The invitations will quickly dry up.

Here, you'll say to anyone within listening distance: the Oxford English Dictionary uses 59 million words to define about 300,000 entries. Isn't that amazing? By the way, were you aware that the 20-volume work, now available on the Internet, boasts about 2.5 million quotations, 25,000 from the Bible alone?

Be warned, these awesome statistics are only the beginning. The next stage is the word searches. You think it might be fun to type in one word to read the definition. But that leads to another word, and another and before you know it, days have passed.

Your colleagues will learn to make a sharp exit as soon as you use the dreaded words: "did you know..?"

Did you know the noun york refers to a strap used to tie a trouser leg underneath the knee?

Did you know ketchup, chin-chin and miaow are some of the 300 English words partly of Chinese origin?

Did you know the phrase "at the end of the day" appears 14 times in the Oxford English Dictionary? Or that York poet WH Auden is quoted 900 times? Novelists Kingsley Amis and son Martin are level pegging on 150 contributions; but Evelyn Waugh has ten times the number of appearances, 565, as his son Auberon.

Did you know that?

From here, things only go downhill. You discover your mother and father have changed their telephone number and have gone ex-directory.

Then you will find yourself in bus queues asking strangers to guess the noun for a beermat collector. As they edge nervously away, you will cry: Why, it's tegestologist, of course...

That's the joy of the English language, as revealed by its greatest reference work the Oxford English Dictionary: endless variety.

New words are being coined every day. Today, the online OED added its latest batch. These include girl power, defined as "power excised by girls; spec. a self-reliant attitude among girls and young women manifested in ambition, assertiveness and individualism".

Other additions are kecks ("Trousers; (rarely) pockets. Also: underpants, knickers"); ecotourism, gimp and microbrewery.

With this latest assortment, lexicologists have added 10,000 new words to the online dictionary since March 2000. Ten thousand in less than two years: our lingo is evolving faster than ever before.

It's all a far cry from the dictionary's origins. A slim work, The New English Dictionary On Historical Principles, was published in 1884, the first of 12 volumes of what was to become the OED.

"The intention," writes Bill Bryson in his book Mother Tongue, "was to record every word used in English since 1150 and to trace it back through all its shifting meanings, spellings, and uses to its earliest recorded appearance."

Scottish bank clerk James Murray was put in charge of the project.

He had a long white beard and 11 children, all of whom were roped into helping with the dictionary.

Murray thought compiling the dictionary would take 12 years at most and fill about 6,400 pages. In fact it took more than 40 years to complete the 15,000-page book.

Hundreds of volunteers helped with the research. One of the most prolific was Dr William Chester Minor.

For 38 years he contributed thousands upon thousands of quotations. But, puzzlingly, he was never able to attend gatherings of contributors in Oxford, despite living in Crowthorne, less than 50 miles away.

The reason, as Murray later discovered to his astonishment, was because Dr Minor was a madman banged up in Broadmoor for murder.

It took until the spring of 1989 for a second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary to be published.

As former North Yorkshire resident Bill Bryson puts it: "No other language has anything even remotely approaching it in scope.

"Because of its existence, more is known about the history of English than any other language in the world."

Yet it is not, and can never be, utterly comprehensive. Among the words you will not find in the OED online are some from The Yorkshire Dictionary Of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore, compiled by Arnold Kellett of Knaresborough .

You won't find fufflement (meaning showy clothes), maddlin (fool) or polesmitten (crazy) in the OED.

Proof that Tyke is a whole different language.

- You can find the OED online at www.oed.com; subscriptions cost £350 a year

Updated: 10:44 Thursday, January 17, 2002