Back in 2007 I noted the following development in lexicography:
It has long been a fixture of my mental furnishings that the longest entry in the OED was for the verb set. I don’t know how many times I’ve trotted out this bit of trivia, but I’ll have to try not to do it any more, because I learn from the Revisions page of the OED newsletter that it is no longer true, and has not been for some years: “For many years the verb to set has been cited as the longest entry in the OED. But a recheck shows that it has at last been toppled from this position. The longest entry in the revised matter is represented by the verb to make (published in June 2000).”
But that information has been rendered inoperative in its turn; David Crotty writes for The Scholarly Kitchen:
Pity the poor Oxford English Dictionary editor who was assigned to cover the word “run”. In the dictionary’s upcoming edition, run has some 645 use cases for the verb form alone, and its definitions run some 75 columns of type. According to Reader’s Digest, run alone took one lexicographer nine months of research to complete.
Interestingly, in the 1928 edition, the word with the most definitions was “set” (200 meanings and 32 pages). Perhaps the switch from set to run says something about changes in the pace of life over the last century.
There’s a video showing some of the varied uses of run. Thanks, Trevor!
Old news! Wikipedia says “The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, which required 60,000 words to describe some 580 senses (430 for the bare verb, the rest in phrasal verbs and idioms). As entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the record was progressively broken by the verbs make in 2000, then put in 2007, then run in 2011 with 645 senses.”
Has set been fully revised in the intervening 13 years? I know the alphabetic progression was latterly abandoned.
To answer myself, no, set is unrevised since 1912.
I see run v. is currently viewable without subscription. The citations’ format now highlights the relevant word in the quotation, which would be nice if it were not buggy;
I.i.1.k.1866– intransitive. Of a person: to go running for exercise or recreation, esp. habitually.
1968 The caption refers to the runner as ‘a jogger out for his morning run’. In New Zealand the noun jogger is an acceptable..word because so many people..run for fitness. [Times 24 May (N.Z. Supplement) p. viii/5] — the first run is highlighted instead of the second one
I.i.3.a.Old English– intransitive. To ride on horseback, typically at a quick pace; to gallop. In later use only more explicitly as to run on horseback or the like. Now rare.
1535 Then were there sene..horsmen runninge to and fro in the ayre. [Bible (Coverdale) 2 Maccabees v. 2] — highlights Then instead of runninge
And that’s presumably without all of the additional senses of “run” documented in Green’s Dictionary of Slang …