The last years of the 15th-century are designated as late 15th-century (l15), and after that each century has three divisions, so that for example 1600 to 1629 is early 17th-century (e17), 1730 to 1769 is mid 18th-century (m18), and 1870 to 1899 is late 19th-century (l19).
After the three larger early divisions of Old English, Middle English, and late Middle English, there is a tripartite division of centuries: material from the period up to 1 149 is dated as Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) covers the period from 1150 to 1349, and late Middle English (LME) represents the period from 1350 to 1469. The ordering of the senses of each word is chronological, and the dating of first and last uses is recorded in conventionalized date ranges. (The project began in 1980, and online searching facilities became available in 1989.) The text is completely new, and presents considerably enhanced historical information.
It was intended primarily as an abridgement of the OED, and for many years its projected title was the "Abridged Oxford Dictionary." The NSOED editors, while using the OED as its primary source material, pursued a program of systematic research using both manual and automatic methods. The first Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1933, was similarly chronological in approach, but was closely tied to the precise lexicographical and semantic structure of the parent OED. The inclusion of information on the age and life history of words current at any time between 1700 and the present day is a major feature, and every headword is traced back to its first point of record (in many cases, to a manuscript source of the Old or Middle English period). Knowles A he New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (NSOED), published in 1993 by the Oxford University Press, is a historical dictionary of Modern English. Historical Perspectives in the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Elizabeth M. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: