ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Oxford English Corpus

Have you ever heard of a big book with lots and lots of words called a dictionary? Well, the Oxford English Corpus is like a giant dictionary for people who study language. It's not really a physical book, but it's a collection of over two billion words! Think about how many pages that would be!

Now, you might be wondering where all these words come from. The Oxford English Corpus gets its words from all kinds of sources, like books, newspapers, and even the internet. Whenever someone writes something down, whether it's a tweet, a text message, or a novel, the words they use might end up in the corpus.

Why would anyone want to collect billions of words? Well, it's to help people understand how language works. People who study language can use the corpus to see how often certain words are used, or how words and phrases change over time. They can also see how different groups of people use language, like teenagers versus middle-aged adults.

So, think of the Oxford English Corpus as a huge collection of words that helps people understand language better. And who knows, maybe you'll even contribute some words to it someday!