'Muggle' Redux in the Oxford English Dictionary

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Meg McCaffrey -- School Library Journal, 05/01/2003

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Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling has one more thing to be proud about. A new definition of the word "muggle"—a person without magical powers—has been added to the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (www.oed.com). This isn't the word's debut, however. In the 12th century, OED defined muggle as "a tail resembling that of a fish," and in the 1930s it was a marijuana cigarette.

"Words mean what they do because of how they are currently used, not how they were used 500 years ago, and not how they were used in Latin 2,000 years ago," explains Jesse Sheidlower, OED's principal North American editor.

More than 2,200 new and revised entries have been added to OED Online since 1997, including FX (as in "special effects"), multi-task, and unplugged. There are also a vast number of terms related to the computer and technology fields, such as MPEG, weblog, and MP3. The online version is updated every three months.

School subscription prices for the online OED start at $375 annually. There's a CD-ROM version for $295, but it can't be networked and doesn't grant users access to the quarterly updates. There's also the old standby, the 20-volume print edition for $995.