Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD) has been the first choice for well over 38 million teachers and students worldwide, outselling many of today's bestselling authors, including J.K. Rolwling. Today, the OALD is based on the latest corpus research and has more words and definitions than any learner's dictionary. What follows is a brief history of the world's favorite learner's dictionary.

'No man has ever done more to further the use of English as an international language'.

This is how Lord Annan described A.S. Hornby, editor of the first Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.

As a young teacher in 1920s Oita, Hornby realized that although his students could understand literature well, they were much less confident in speaking and writing English. To help his students, he began to scribble simple definitions onto paper and kept them in a box.

These definitions would become Hornby's Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary published in 1942 in Japan by Kaitakusha. Metal was in short supply in wartime Japan, so printing plates had to be melted down and recast 100 pages at a time. Hornby, who had also been in talks with Oxford University Press to publish an international version of the dictionary, was not to see his work until after the war.

Earlier that same year Hornby boarded the last Red Cross ship bound for England, smuggling one bundle of dictionary pages. Upon arrival in the UK this manuscript was presented to Oxford University Press who, realizing the importance of this work, cut print runs of Shakespeare, the Bible and the Concise Oxford Dictionary to provide sufficient paper for the world’s first learner’s dictionary. Published in 1948 as the Learner’s Dictionary of Current English.

From humble beginnings in Kyushu, the OALD, like its author, has done more than any other to further the use of English as an international language.