The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form

The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form (The OEDILF) is an open collaborative project to compile an English dictionary whose entries all take the form of limericks. The project was originally called the "Oxford English Dictionary in Limerick Form", but the OED's legal department advised against it. The site, launched in May 2004, has attracted over 2,100 writers from around the world, many of whom are active at any particular time. As of October 2018, the project has amassed more than 100,000 rhyming definitions. The project progresses alphabetically and is currently accepting only those words beginning with the letters Aa- through Go-. The entire project is expected to take decades before being considered complete. An estimated completion date was added in 2011, which currently claims that 25 September 2076 will be the day they finally finish. Other OEDILFers believe that, due to the nature of our malleable language, they will merely be done with a "first edition" at that time and will move on to work on filling in all the meanings (many words have more than one) they may have omitted and all of the new words coined during the writing of this first edition.

The OEDILF has been featured on National Public Radio in the U.S., on BBC Radio 4 in the UK, CBC radio in Canada, and in the pages of the Washington Post, the Glasgow Herald, and various other newspapers. It was also named one of PC Magazine's Top 99 Undiscovered Websites of 2006.

History

The project was initiated in 2004 by Chris J. Strolin. With the assistance of contributors, by 2018 the project had amassed more than 100,000 rhyming definitions. Strolin has set a personal goal of writing at least one limerick definition per day; by November 2018 he had created 7,769 rhyming definitions.[1]

References
  1. News: There Was Once a Man Who Wrote Limericks..., Binyan, 11 January 2018, p. 4


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