IPI Lexicon
When I was in college, we used to talk about “OEDing.” As in OED (verb): to determine the etymology, significance, and usage of a word in the Oxford English Dictionary online. As in, “I just OEDed “penultimate” and it cannot be used in that way.”
(Penultimate (adj.) means “The last but one in a series of things.” As in, from the New York Times, “The play's penultimate sequence, set in a boxcar, is a shocker.”)
At IPI, the OED is our final authority on word usage. “Can you be mired in a rut?” I ask John. “OED it.” (You can, but it’s unlikely. A rut is a “deep furrow or track,” while “to be mired” implies mud or swampy ground.) While some of our publishers prefer Merriam-Webster’s (11th edition) for its relative simplicity, we like the breadth, the examples, and the etymology offered by the OED. (Mire, from early Scandinavian, shares its roots with the Icelandic mýri and the Swedish, Dutch, and Danish myr.)
It’s true that we like the OED because it adds to our aura of intelligence. (Aura: from the Greek for “breeze.” As from the Glasgow Herald: “The genteel aura of the upper circle.”) And it allows us to avoid potentially awkward occasions of misuse or misunderstanding. We have been known to send office memos with links to the OED, warning each other of potential vocabulary pitfalls.
Sometimes, though, even the OED lets us down. The OED lists several meanings of the verb “shank,” including “to travel on foot,” “to sink (a shaft),” or “to knit stockings.” But it fails to describe the definition that brought us to the OED in the first place (“To stab someone quickly and repeatedly in the side or lower back, usually with a shiv or, occasionally, a spork.”) (A shiv, according to the OED, is a razor.)
As for the verb OED, it’s still not in the OED. But you can find it on urbandictionary.com: “verb (transitive), to consult the OED for the meaning of a word. As in: "‘What the heck does 'absquatulation'* mean?’
‘I dunno - oed it’”
*to decamp