This indispensable reference work was first published in 1995 by the King's College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies. The current two-volume set from a different publisher is called a "new impression" (1.xii) and "2nd Impression" (title page) rather than a second edition; my brief remarks here will mainly address changes made in the new impression. Volume I contains the thesaurus proper, with a classification system modified from Roget's Thesaurus. Volume II contains an index of the Old English words found in Volume I, cross-referenced to their thesaurus classifications. For instance, Volume II, p. 839, tells us that byrnete will be found in section 02.06.08.06 on water birds; one has to turn to that list of water birds (1.93) to find that the word actually means 'barnacle goose'. The "corrections and additions" in this new impression are said to be "mostly minor, concentrating on the spelling of head-words" (1.xii), i.e., the Old English words entered in the index in Volume II. Examples of these changes are listed in the brief "Note to the New Impression" (1.xii), illustrating the problems involved in deciding on a main spelling among several attested variants. The original project was based on a set of slips drawn from the dictionaries by Bosworth & Toller and Clark Hall & Meritt, with some consultation of the working files of the Toronto Dictionary of Old English (DOE) in progress. The new impression apparently consulted further the published fascicles of the DOE (now available through the letter F on CD-ROM) in deciding on head-word spellings.
In addition, a "few words" were "added, removed or recategorised" (1.xii). No examples of this type of change are given, but here the DOE was also useful. For instance, the word aglæca is now entered under the new meanings 'an awesome opponent' (1.564) and 'awe-inspiring' (1.414). Recent scholarly studies of Old English words must also have been consulted. The revised section on plant names (1.96-114) benefits from the published work of Peter Bierbaumer. Thus we find a new word for fumitory (atorlaþe, 1.111) and a changed opinion on the meaning of fornetes folm (orchid, 1.112). In the section on birds, the name reodmuþa has been moved from 'parrot' (one of Meritt's more desperate suggestions) to 'pheasant' (1.91), reflecting the (sensible) opinion of Inge Kryger Kabell. Hopefully this section on Old English bird names will be further improved in future by incorporation of the many ornithologically astute suggestions made by P.R. Kitson.
Before long the Thesaurus of Old English (TOE) will be incorporated into a comprehensive Historical Thesaurus of English, as described online at: http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLang/thesaur/homepage.htm. From this homepage one can access a bibliography of published accounts of the project and studies that have already made use of its materials. The TOE is the pilot volume, developed separately, since it was based on Anglo-Saxon dictionaries rather than the Oxford English Dictionary being used for the rest of the project (although the OED appears to have been consulted for this volume also; see for instance the definition 'urine' for adela, 1.63, which derives from the OED). When the TOE is incorporated into the Historical Thesaurus its vocabulary will be more accessible to Modern English speakers since perforce its index is now in Old English. To find if there was an Old English word for, say, mastiff, one has to work through the TOE's conceptual outline, starting with 'Animal' (section 02.06 as given in the table of contents, 1.v), continuing through to 'Particular animals (alphabetical order)' (section 02.06.02.01, 1.81) and thus to 'Dog' and 'A mastiff' (1.83), where one finds two names: roþhund and ryþ þa. Whether these words, glossing Latin molossus (a big dog from Greece), in fact denoted the English mastiff is another question, but at least one knows where to begin. One can then look up the words in the Old English dictionaries, in the microfiche concordance (Venezky & Healey) and/or the online DOE Old English Corpus to find the original contexts, and in the bibliography of Old English word studies (Cameron et al.) to locate published discussions.
Libraries and individuals who were not able to purchase the TOE in its first run will be grateful for this new and improved printing.
Bibliography:
Bierbaumer, Peter. Der botanische Wortschatz des Altenglischen. 3. Teil. Der botanische in altenglischen Glossen. Grazer Beitrage zur englische Philologie, 3. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1979.
Bosworth, Joseph. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Supplement by T. Northcote Toller. Addenda by Alistair Campbell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Cameron, Angus, Allison Kingsmill and Ashley Crandell Amos. Old English Word Studies: A Preliminary Author and Word Index. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1983.
Clark Hall, John R. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 4th ed. with supplement by Herbert D. Meritt. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1960.
Dictionary of Old English. A to F on CD-ROM. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2003.
Dictionary of Old English Old English Corpus. Available online to subscribers at http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/o/oec/ .
Kabell, Inge Kryger. "The Old English reodmuþa and the Bird Today Called the Pheasant." Studia Neophilologica 59.1 (1987): 3-6.
Kitson, P. R. "Old English Bird-Names." English Studies 78 (1997): 481-505 and 79 (1998): 2-22.
Venezky, Richard L., and Antonette diPaolo Healey, compilers. A Microfiche Concordance to Old English. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1980.