Oxford English Dictionary

The OED is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources. For each word in the OED, the various groupings of senses are dealt with in chronological order according to the quotation evidence, i.e., the senses with the earliest quotations appear first, and the senses which have developed more recently appear further down the entry.