Middle English Dictionary the next several decades. The dictionary was completed in 2001. In 2007, the full dictionary was made freely available and searchable online in an HTML format. Middle English Dictionary The Middle English Dictionary is a dictionary of Middle English published by the University of Michigan. "Its 15,000 pages offer a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips, the largest collection of this kind available." The project began in the 1920s. The first instalment, "Plan and Bibliography", containing a list of Middle English texts used
Oxford English Dictionary project. Trench suggested that a new, truly "comprehensive" dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the Society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary. Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips. Later the same year, the Society agreed to the project in principle, with the title "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" ("NED"). Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) played the key role in the project's first months, but his Church of England appointment as Dean of Westminster meant that he could not give the dictionary project the time that it