The HTE was conceived and begun in 1965 by the English Language & Linguistics department of the University of Glasgow, who have ever since continued to compile the thesaurus.

Today, the HTE is available to the public online, but a print version, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED), was published in 2009.

[3][4] As the HTE website states, "in addition to providing hitherto unavailable information for linguistic and textual scholars, the Historical Thesaurus online is a rich resource for students of social and cultural history, showing how concepts developed through the words that refer to them.

[citation needed] In 2017, the University of Glasgow was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education for the HTE.

[citation needed] A second edition of the online HTE is currently in progress and is expected to be launched in late 2020.