OED vs ODP: what’s the difference?

[Philip A]

There seems to be confusion over what dictionary the show uses. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary is often confused with other Oxford dictionaries available, as this tutorial video explains at 2:34. https://youtu.be/JAdoOY3muqw?si=JNbXhFrSu9-sj7Cd

So I thought I’d make this clear by explaining the rules of Countdown, and how the OED differs.

The website used in Dictionary Corner to judge words is premium.oxforddictionaries.com. This is Oxford Dictionaries Premium (ODP), formerly Oxford Dictionaries Online. It has been used on Countdown since June 2014, replacing the Oxford Dictionary of English (and the pen-cam). Any word that isn’t there is disallowed, even if it appears in any other dictionary.

The website used is not oed.com. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is never used, and is actually different to ODP. Any word in OED but not ODP is disallowed. 20 volumes of the OED in print were awarded to series winners until June 2021, when the prize was scrapped (for the record, the OED in print hasn’t been updated since 1989).

The main differences are that the OED is larger and is a historical dictionary; ODP is not.

The OED is about words used in all-time English. When a word enters the OED, it stays there forever and never leaves it. That’s why it contains well over 500,000 words and phrases. This is simply much too big for word games, such as the letters games in Countdown. That’s why the show doesn’t use it, for television convenience and to try to reward skill instead of extremely obscure words which no-one uses anymore.

ODP, however, is different. Apart from the fact it contains fewer words (albeit still reasonably voluminous) the ODP a “living” dictionary; it is about words in current English. In other words, it is about English as it is used. Each year, a very small amount of words can leave the ODP – but it does add approximately 2,000 words each year, thanks to constant research from the editors of ODP. Updates are typically published twice a year (at least according to the video I linked).

ODP does contain some content from the OED, but not all of it. ODP does therefore contain some OED words (without specifying whether or not it is a mass noun) with exactly the same definitions.

Only the British English section of ODP is used, not the US English section. The British English section does still contain some U.S. terms, such as DIAPER and SIDEWALK, as well as some (but not all) entries under ‘US English’ such as COQUI; all of these words are eligible for Countdown (just not U.S. spellings such as ‘flavor’ with no u, and ‘signaled’ with just one l instead of two).

Both dictionaries require an annual subscription to access, but ODP is much cheaper than the OED (and both can be accessed via most library cards). Both sites have no adverts as well.

If you play Countdown on Apterous.org (or on Jack Hurst’s app, both excellent platforms), the English dictionary used in the game (and indeed Lexplorer) will be about words in ODP, as well as standard inflections of verbs, adjectives and countable nouns. Lexplorer is 99.99% accurate and therefore reliable and extremely useful. ODP is updated before Lexplorer. Co-events also use ODP/Lexplorer.

If you submit any Dictionary Error tickets on Apterous (including any updates), you should (unfortunately, as it’s not free) be subscribed to ODP and check any words in there prior, under British English. None of the website dictionaries listed in Lexplorer are helpful, because they contain some words which are not found in ODP and therefore invalid for Countdown.

I hope this explains and addresses any confusion or queries you might have regarding the Countdown dictionary.

TL;DR: Countdown uses Oxford Dictionaries Premium, not Oxford English Dictionary!

[Adam S Latchford]

Can anybody explain to me like i'm a 5 year old why words get taken out of the dictionary?

[Fiona T]

Can anybody explain to me like i'm a 5 year old why words get taken out of the dictionary?

A lot of the words that have been removed from apterous have been because of misinterpretation of the countdown rules - thinks like percent, readout, outearn etc are now considered to be US spellings of the hyphenated English version rather than separate words (such as diaper) I think premium may have changed the way they're displayed - there used to be 'entry from US dictionary' but those examples aren't showing that. Others are where premium update the entry - maybe showing it as a mass noun where they didn't previously, or removing explicit comparatives. Some things do just go completely though - AKETON is one that just disappeared in mid 2021 - probably loads of others too! I suppose they're just considered not to be in current usage (unlike RUINEYAT which we all used daily...)

[Philip A]

Can anybody explain to me like i'm a 5 year old why words get taken out of the dictionary?

A lot of the words that have been removed from apterous have been because of misinterpretation of the countdown rules - thinks like percent, readout, outearn etc are now considered to be US spellings of the hyphenated English version rather than separate words (such as diaper) I think premium may have changed the way they're displayed - there used to be 'entry from US dictionary' but those examples aren't showing that. Others are where premium update the entry - maybe showing it as a mass noun where they didn't previously, or removing explicit comparatives. Some things do just go completely though - AKETON is one that just disappeared in mid 2021 - probably loads of others too! I suppose they're just considered not to be in current usage (unlike RUINEYAT which we all used daily...)

Correct. About a dozen words, or just over, were removed from updated editions of paper dictionaries too. For example, ‘driftage’ used to be in Concise Oxford English Dictionary. That word is long gone and isn’t in ODP either.

[Adam S Latchford]

So basically...

Words don't get used anymore so they get taken out of the dictionary

Seems such a weird thing to do I can't quite comprehend it. Maybe I'm just thick

[Gavin Chipper]

Well that's the difference between the OED and ODP. There's an all-time dictionary and a current usage one. I don't think it's that insane.

[Adam S Latchford]

I guess drawing the line over what is a used word and what isn't is what I'm finding a bit weird. And classifying current usage.

[Gavin Chipper]

The decision seems quite arbitary in places, including RUINEYAT as Fiona mentioned.

With a print dictionary, which has to be a reasonable size, it makes sense that they would have to make these decisions, but online it seems less important to have the two distinct dictionaries, except maybe for Countdown.

[Adam Gillard]

I guess drawing the line over what is a used word and what isn't is what I'm finding a bit weird. And classifying current usage.

There's a thing called the Oxford Corpus which is basically a big list of words and how many times they appear. It is heavily biased towards traditional print media, e.g. newspapers and magazines. When a word isn't cropping up any more (or only very infrequently), it is removed from the "current" dictionary.

[Adam S Latchford]

I guess drawing the line over what is a used word and what isn't is what I'm finding a bit weird. And classifying current usage.

There's a thing called the Oxford Corpus which is basically a big list of words and how many times they appear. It is heavily biased towards traditional print media, e.g. newspapers and magazines. When a word isn't cropping up any more (or only very infrequently), it is removed from the "current" dictionary.

Thank you! That actually makes sense (like it doesn't make sense for them to do it this way, but it does make sense that that's the explanation)