Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press. It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world; the second edition, comprising 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, was published in 1989. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but it was only in 1884 that it began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. In 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989.
Since 2000, compilation of a third edition of the dictionary has been underway half of, complete. The first electronic version of the dictionary was made available in 1988; the online version has been available since 2000, as of April 2014 was receiving over two million hits per month. The third edition of the dictionary will most only appear in electronic form: the Chief Executive of Oxford University Press has stated that it is unlikely that it will be printed; as a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary explains words by showing their development rather than their present-day usages. Therefore, it shows definitions in the order that the sense of the word began being used, including word meanings which are no longer used; each definition is shown with numerous short usage quotations. This allows the reader to get an approximate sense of the time period in which a particular word has been in use, additional quotations help the reader to ascertain information about how the word is used in context, beyond any explanation that the dictionary editors can provide.
The format of the OED's entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects. The forerunners to the OED, such as the early volumes of the Deutsches Wörterbuch, had provided few quotations from a limited number of sources, whereas the OED editors preferred larger groups of quite short quotations from a wide selection of authors and publications; this influenced volumes of this and other lexicographical works. According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to "key in" the 59 million words of the OED second edition, 60 years to proofread them, 540 megabytes to store them electronically; as of 30 November 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary contained 301,100 main entries. Supplementing the entry headwords, there are 157,000 bold-type derivatives; the dictionary's latest, complete print edition was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, which required 60,000 words to describe some 430 senses.
As entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000 put in 2007 run in 2011. Despite its considerable size, the OED is neither the world's largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers' dictionary of the German language, begun in 1838 and completed in 1961; the first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca is the first great dictionary devoted to a modern European language and was published in 1612. The official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española, its first edition was published in 1780; the Kangxi dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716. The dictionary began as a Philological Society project of a small group of intellectuals in London: Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, Frederick Furnivall, who were dissatisfied with the existing English dictionaries; the Society expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844, but it was not until June 1857 that they began by forming an "Unregistered Words Committee" to search for words that were unlisted or poorly defined in current dictionaries.
In November, Trench's report was not a list of unregistered words. The Society realized that the number of unlisted words would be far more than the number of words in the English dictionaries of the 19th century, shifted their idea from covering only words that were not in English diction
Fluid ounce
A fluid ounce is a unit of volume used for measuring liquids. Various definitions have been used throughout history, but only two are still in common use: the British Imperial and the United States customary fluid ounce. An imperial fluid ounce is 1⁄20 of an imperial pint, 1⁄160 of an imperial gallon or 28.41 ml. A US fluid ounce is 1⁄16 of a US fluid pint and 1⁄128 of a US liquid gallon or 29.57 ml, making it about 4% larger than the imperial fluid ounce. The fluid ounce is distinct from the ounce as a unit of weight or mass, although it is sometimes referred to as an "ounce" where context makes the meaning clear, such as ounces in a bottle; the fluid ounce was the volume occupied by one ounce of some substance, such as wine or water. The ounce in question varied depending on the system of fluid measure, such as that used for wine versus ale. Various ounces were used over the centuries, including the Tower ounce, troy ounce, avoirdupois ounce, various ounces used in international trade, such as Paris troy.
The situation is further complicated by the medieval practice of "allowances", whereby a unit of measure was not equal to the sum of its parts. For example, the 364-pound woolsack had a 14-pound allowance for the weight of the sack and other packaging materials. In 1824, the British Parliament defined the imperial gallon as the volume of ten pounds of water at standard temperature; the gallon was divided into four quarts, the quart into two pints, the pint into four gills, the gill into five ounces. Thus, there were 160 imperial fluid ounces to the gallon making the mass of a fluid ounce of water one avoirdupois ounce; this relationship is still valid though the imperial gallon's definition was revised to be 4.54609 litres, making the imperial fluid ounce 28.4130625 ml. The US fluid ounce is based on the US gallon, based on the wine gallon of 231 cubic inches, used in England prior to 1824. With the adoption of the international inch, the US fluid ounce became 29.5735295625 ml or about 4% larger than the imperial unit.
Imperial fluid ounceUS customary fluid ounceUS food labelling fluid ounce US regulation 21 CFR 101.9 defines a fluid ounce as 30 millilitres, but this is for use in nutrition labelling only
Apothecaries' system
The apothecaries' system or apothecaries' weights and measures is a historical system of mass and volume units that were used by physicians and apothecaries for medical recipes, sometimes by scientists. The English version of the system is related to the English troy system of weights, the pound and grain being the same in both, it divides a pound into 12 ounces, an ounce into 8 drachms, a drachm into 3 scruples or 60 grains. This exact form of the system was used in the United Kingdom; the apothecaries' system of measures is a similar system of volume units based on the fluid ounce. For a long time, medical recipes were written in Latin using special symbols to denote weights and measures; the use of different measure and weight systems depending on the purpose was an universal phenomenon in Europe between the decline of the Roman Empire and metrication. This was connected with international commerce with the need to use the standards of the target market and to compensate for a common weighing practice that caused a difference between actual and nominal weight.
In the 19th century, most European countries or cities still had at least a "commercial" or "civil" system for general trading, a second system for precious metals such as gold and silver. The system for precious metals was divided in a different way from the commercial system using special units such as the carat. More it was based on different weight standards; the apothecaries' system used the same ounces as the precious metals system, although then the number of ounces in a pound could be different. The apothecaries' pound was divided into its own special units, which were inherited from the general-purpose weight system of the Romans. Where the apothecaries' weights and the normal commercial weights were different, it was not always clear which of the two systems was used in trade between merchants and apothecaries, or by which system apothecaries weighed medicine when they sold it. In old merchants' handbooks the former system is sometimes referred to as the pharmaceutical system, distinguished from the apothecaries' system.
The traditional English apothecaries' system of weights is as shown in the table, the pound and grain being identical to the troy pound and grain. In the United Kingdom, a reform in 1826 made the troy pound the primary weight unit, but this had no effect on apothecaries' weights. However, the Medicinals Act of 1858 abolished the apothecaries' system in favour of the standard Avoirdupois system; the confusing variety of definitions and conversions for pounds and ounces is covered elsewhere in a table of pound definitions. In the United States, the apothecaries' system remained official until it was abolished in 1971 in favour of the metric system. From the pound down to the scruple, the English apothecaries' system was a subset of the Roman weight system except that the troy pound and its subdivisions were heavier than the Roman pound and its subdivisions. Similar systems were used all over Europe, but with considerable local variation described below under Variants; the English-speaking countries used a system of units of fluid measure, or in modern terminology volume units, based on the apothecaries' system.
A volume of liquid, that of an apothecaries' ounce of water was called a fluid ounce, was divided into fluid drachms and sometimes fluid scruples. The analogue of the grain was called a minim; the imperial and US systems differ in the size of the basic unit, in the number of fluid ounces per pint. Apothecaries' systems for volumes were internationally much less common than those for weights. Before introduction of the imperial units in the UK, all apothecaries' measures were based on the wine gallon, which survived in the US under the name liquid gallon or wet gallon; the wine gallon was abolished in Britain in 1826, this system was replaced by a new one based on the newly introduced imperial gallon. Since the imperial gallon is 20% more than the liquid gallon, the same is true for the imperial pint in relation to the liquid pint; this explains why the number of fluid ounces per gallon had to be adjusted in the new system so that the fluid ounce was not changed too much by the reform. So, the modern UK fluid ounce is 4% less than the US fluid ounce, the same is true for the smaller units.
For some years both systems were used concurrently in the UK. There were commonly used, but unofficial divisions of the Apothecaries' system, consisting of: glass-tumbler 8 fl oz breakfast-cup about 8 fl oz tea-cup 5 fl oz wine-glass 2 fl oz table-spoon 1/2 fl oz dessert-spoon 2 fl dr tea-spoon 1 fl dr In the US, the similar measures in use were once Tumblerful — ƒ℥ viii Teacupful — ƒ℥ iv Wineglassful — ƒ℥ ij Tablespoonful— ƒ℥ ss Desertspoonful— ƒʒ ij Teaspoonful — ƒʒ j The cited book states, "In all cases the modern teacups, tablespoons and teaspoons, after careful test by the author, were found to average 25 per cent. Greater capacity than the theoretical quantities given above, thus the use of graduated medicine glasses, which may be had now at a trifling cost, should be insisted upon."Apothecaries' measures
United States customary units
United States customary units are a system of measurements used in the United States. The United States customary system developed from English units which were in use in the British Empire before the U. S. became an independent country. However, the United Kingdom's system of measures was overhauled in 1824 to create the imperial system, changing the definitions of some units. Therefore, while many U. S. units are similar to their Imperial counterparts, there are significant differences between the systems. The majority of U. S. customary units were redefined in terms of the meter and the kilogram with the Mendenhall Order of 1893 and, in practice, for many years before. These definitions were refined by the international yard and pound agreement of 1959. Americans use customary units in commercial activities, as well as for personal and social use. In science, many sectors of industry, some of government and military, metric units are used; the International System of Units, the modern form of the metric system, is preferred for many uses by the U.
S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. For newer units of measure where there is no traditional customary unit, international units are used, sometimes mixed with customary units, such as electrical resistance of wire expressed in ohms per thousand feet; the United States system of units is similar to the British imperial system. Both systems are derived from English units, a system which had evolved over the millennia before American independence, which had its roots in Roman and Anglo-Saxon units; the customary system was championed by the U. S.-based International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures in the late 19th century. Advocates of the customary system saw the French metric, system as atheistic. An auxiliary of the Institute in Ohio published a poem with wording such as "down with every'metric' scheme" and "A perfect inch, a perfect pint". One adherent of the customary system called it "a just weight and a just measure, which alone are acceptable to the Lord".
The U. S. government passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, which made the metric system "the preferred system of weights and measures for U. S. trade and commerce". The legislation states that the federal government has a responsibility to assist industry as it voluntarily converts to the metric system, i.e. metrification. This is most evident in U. S. labeling requirements on food products, where SI units are always presented alongside customary units. According to the CIA Factbook, the United States is one of three nations that have not adopted the metric system as their official system of weights and measures. U. S. Customary units are used on consumer products and in industrial manufacturing. Metric units are standard in science, medicine, as well as many sectors of industry and government, including the military. There are anecdotal objections to the use of metric units in carpentry and the building trades, on the basis that it is easier to remember an integer number of inches plus a fraction than a measurement in millimeters, or that foot-inch measurements are more suitable when distances are divided into halves and quarters in parallel.
The metric system lacks a parallel to the foot. For measuring length, the U. S. customary system uses the inch, foot and mile, which are the only four customary length measurements in everyday use. Since July 1, 1959, these have been defined on the basis of 1 yard = 0.9144 meters except for some applications in surveying. The U. S. the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries agreed on this definition, so it is termed international measure. When international measure was introduced in the English-speaking countries, the basic geodetic datum in North America was the North American Datum of 1927, constructed by triangulation based on the definition of the foot in the Mendenhall Order of 1893, 1 foot = 1200/3937 meters: this definition was retained for data derived from NAD27, but renamed the US survey foot to distinguish it from the international foot. For most applications, the difference between the two definitions is insignificant – one international foot is 0.999998 of a US survey foot, for a difference of about 1/8 inch per mile – but it affects the definition of the State Plane Coordinate Systems, which can stretch over hundreds of miles.
The NAD27 was replaced in the 1980s by the North American Datum of 1983, defined in meters. The SPCSs were updated, but the National Geodetic Survey left the decision of which definition of the foot to use to the individual states. All SPCSs are defined in meters, but seven states have SPCSs defined in US survey feet and an eighth state in international feet: the other 42 states use only meter-based SPCSs. State legislation is important for determining the conversion factor to be used for everyday land surveying and real estate transactions, although the difference is of no practical significance given the precision of normal surveying measurements over short distances. Twenty-four states have legislated that surveying measures should be based on the US survey foot, eight have legislated that they be made on the basis of the international foot, eighteen have not specified the conversion factor from metric units; the most used area unit with a name unrelated to any length unit is the acre. The National Institute of Standards and Technology contends that customary area units are defined in terms of the square survey foot, not the square international foot.
Conversion factors are based on Astin and National Institute
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and colonization of the Mediterranean Basin; this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedon, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea; the Hellenistic period came to an end with the conquests and annexations of the eastern Mediterranean world by the Roman Republic, which established the Roman province of Macedonia in Roman Greece, the province of Achaea during the Roman Empire. Classical Greek culture philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe.
For this reason, Classical Greece is considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Greek culture gave great importance to knowledge. Science and religion were not separate and getting closer to the truth meant getting closer to the gods. In this context, they understood the importance of mathematics as an instrument for obtaining more reliable knowledge. Greek culture, in a few centuries and with a limited population, managed to explore and make progress in many fields of science, mathematics and knowledge in general. Classical antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC and ended in the 6th century AD. Classical antiquity in Greece was preceded by the Greek Dark Ages, archaeologically characterised by the protogeometric and geometric styles of designs on pottery. Following the Dark Ages was the Archaic Period, beginning around the 8th century BC.
The Archaic Period saw early developments in Greek culture and society which formed the basis for the Classical Period. After the Archaic Period, the Classical Period in Greece is conventionally considered to have lasted from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 until the death of Alexander the Great in 323; the period is characterized by a style, considered by observers to be exemplary, i.e. "classical", as shown in the Parthenon, for instance. Politically, the Classical Period was dominated by Athens and the Delian League during the 5th century, but displaced by Spartan hegemony during the early 4th century BC, before power shifted to Thebes and the Boeotian League and to the League of Corinth led by Macedon; this period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon. Following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East; this period ends with the Roman conquest. Roman Greece is considered to be the period between Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC and the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in AD 330.
Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the 4th to early 6th centuries AD, sometimes taken to be complete with the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529. The historical period of ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in proper historiography, while earlier ancient history or proto-history is known by much more circumstantial evidence, such as annals or king lists, pragmatic epigraphy. Herodotus is known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Written between the 450s and 420s BC, Herodotus' work reaches about a century into the past, discussing 6th century historical figures such as Darius I of Persia, Cambyses II and Psamtik III, alluding to some 8th century ones such as Candaules. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Demosthenes and Aristotle. Most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities.
Their scope is further limited by a focus on political and diplomatic history, ignoring economic and social history. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. Literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. Objects with Phoenician writing on them may have been available in Greece from the 9th century BC, but the earliest evidence of Greek writing comes from graffiti on Greek pottery from the mid-8th century. Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern dictated by Greek geography: every island and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges; the Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period. It was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, though Chalcis was the nominal victor.
A mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC. This
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world, the second oldest after Cambridge University Press. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the vice-chancellor known as the delegates of the press, they are headed by the secretary to the delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University has used a similar system to oversee OUP since the 17th century; the Press is located on opposite Somerville College, in the suburb Jericho. The Oxford University Press Museum is located on Oxford. Visits are led by a member of the archive staff. Displays include a 19th-century printing press, the OUP buildings, the printing and history of the Oxford Almanack, Alice in Wonderland and the Oxford English Dictionary; the university became involved in the print trade around 1480, grew into a major printer of Bibles, prayer books, scholarly works. OUP took on the project that became the Oxford English Dictionary in the late 19th century, expanded to meet the ever-rising costs of the work.
As a result, the last hundred years has seen Oxford publish children's books, school text books, journals, the World's Classics series, a range of English language teaching texts. Moves into international markets led to OUP opening its own offices outside the United Kingdom, beginning with New York City in 1896. With the advent of computer technology and harsh trading conditions, the Press's printing house at Oxford was closed in 1989, its former paper mill at Wolvercote was demolished in 2004. By contracting out its printing and binding operations, the modern OUP publishes some 6,000 new titles around the world each year; the first printer associated with Oxford University was Theoderic Rood. A business associate of William Caxton, Rood seems to have brought his own wooden printing press to Oxford from Cologne as a speculative venture, to have worked in the city between around 1480 and 1483; the first book printed in Oxford, in 1478, an edition of Rufinus's Expositio in symbolum apostolorum, was printed by another, printer.
Famously, this was mis-dated in Roman numerals as "1468", thus pre-dating Caxton. Rood's printing included John Ankywyll's Compendium totius grammaticae, which set new standards for teaching of Latin grammar. After Rood, printing connected with the university remained sporadic for over half a century. Records or surviving work are few, Oxford did not put its printing on a firm footing until the 1580s. In response to constraints on printing outside London imposed by the Crown and the Stationers' Company, Oxford petitioned Elizabeth I of England for the formal right to operate a press at the university; the chancellor, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, pleaded Oxford's case. Some royal assent was obtained, since the printer Joseph Barnes began work, a decree of Star Chamber noted the legal existence of a press at "the universitie of Oxforde" in 1586. Oxford's chancellor, Archbishop William Laud, consolidated the legal status of the university's printing in the 1630s. Laud envisaged a unified press of world repute.
Oxford would establish it on university property, govern its operations, employ its staff, determine its printed work, benefit from its proceeds. To that end, he petitioned Charles I for rights that would enable Oxford to compete with the Stationers' Company and the King's Printer, obtained a succession of royal grants to aid it; these were brought together in Oxford's "Great Charter" in 1636, which gave the university the right to print "all manner of books". Laud obtained the "privilege" from the Crown of printing the King James or Authorized Version of Scripture at Oxford; this "privilege" created substantial returns in the next 250 years, although it was held in abeyance. The Stationers' Company was alarmed by the threat to its trade and lost little time in establishing a "Covenant of Forbearance" with Oxford. Under this, the Stationers paid an annual rent for the university not to exercise its full printing rights – money Oxford used to purchase new printing equipment for smaller purposes.
Laud made progress with internal organization of the Press. Besides establishing the system of Delegates, he created the wide-ranging supervisory post of "Architypographus": an academic who would have responsibility for every function of the business, from print shop management to proofreading; the post was more an ideal than a workable reality, but it survived in the loosely structured Press until the 18th century. In practice, Oxford's Warehouse-Keeper dealt with sales and the hiring and firing of print shop staff. Laud's plans, hit terrible obstacles, both personal and political. Falling foul of political intrigue, he was executed in 1645, by which time the English Civil War had broken out. Oxford became a Royalist stronghold during the conflict, many printers in the city concentrated on producing political pamphlets or sermons; some outstanding mathematical and Orientalist works emerged at this time—notably, texts edited by Edward Pococke, the Regius Professor of Hebrew—but no university press on Laud's model was possible before the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660.
It was established by the vice-chancellor, John Fell, Dean of Christ Church, Bishop of Oxford, Secretary to the Delegates. Fell regarded Laud as a martyr, was determined to honour his vision of the Press. Using the provisions of the Great Charter, Fell persuaded Oxford to refuse any further payments from the Stationers and drew
Vial
A vial is a small glass or plastic vessel or bottle used to store medication as liquids, powders or capsules. They can be used as scientific sample vessels. Vial-like glass containers date back to classical antiquity. There are different types of vials such as a single dose vial and multi-dose vials used for medications; the single dose vial is only used. The CDC sets specific guidelines on multi-dose vials. A vial can have a bottle-like shape with a neck; the volume defined by the neck is known as the headspace. The English word "vial" is derived from the Greek phiale, meaning "a broad flat container". Comparable terms include Late Latin fiola and Middle English fiole and viole. Modern vials are made out of plastic or sometimes glass. There are used as storage for small quantities of liquid used in medical or molecular biology applications. There are several different types of used closure systems. For glass vials, options include lip vials and crimp vials. Plastic vials, which can be moulded in plastic, can have other closure systems, such as'hinge caps' which snap shut when pressed.
These are sometimes called snap caps. The bottom of a vial is flat, unlike test tubes, which have a rounded bottom, but this is not the case for small hinge-cap or snap-top vials; the small bottle-shaped vials used in laboratories are known as bijou or McCartney's bottles. The bijou bottle tends to be smaller with a volume of around 10 milliliters. Ampoule Seven bowls referred to as "seven vials", a series of plagues mentioned in the Biblical Book of Revelation Vacutainer Hans-Jürgen Bässler and Frank Lehmann. Containment Technology: Progress in the Pharmaceutical and Food Processing Industry. Springer. ISBN 978-3642392917
