An abridgement of the complete work was contemplated from 1879, when the Oxford University Press took over from the Philological Society on what was then known as A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.

Onions wrote that SOED was "to present in miniature all the features of the principal work" and to be "a quintessence of those vast materials" in the complete OED.

The third edition was published in the United States under the name The Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles in 1944 with reprints in 1947, 1950, 1952, and 1955.

The whole text was completely revised for the Fourth Edition, which was published in 1993 as the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

The book attempted to include all English words which had substantial currency after 1700, plus the vocabulary of Shakespeare, John Milton, Edmund Spenser and the King James Version.

As previously, the vocabulary included entries in general English from 1700 to the present day and in earlier major literary works.

[3] Angus Stevenson, the editor of the Shorter OED, stated the reason: "People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for."