What was the name of the Oxford dictionary project J.R.R. Tolkien worked on after World War I?

J.R.R. Tolkien worked on the Oxford English Dictionary after World War I.

After serving in the British Army during the First World War, Tolkien joined the staff working on the dictionary, then known as the New English Dictionary. His work focused mainly on words beginning with the letter W, including their histories, forms, and relationships to earlier Germanic languages.

The Oxford English Dictionary is a historical dictionary, not merely a list of modern definitions. Its entries trace words through dated quotations and explain how meanings and spellings changed. That approach suited Tolkien’s training as a philologist and gave him practical experience with the history of English vocabulary.

The dictionary job is often remembered as a colorful footnote, but it connected directly with Tolkien’s later scholarship. His sensitivity to word origins, sound changes, and old texts became a major part of the way he created names and languages for Middle-earth.