EDD Online is a digitised version of Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, which was published from 1898 (or 1896) to 1905 and covers the time from 1700 to 1904, with occasional, mainly etymologically motivated references to the preceding 1,000 years, that is, from 700 to 1700. The digitisation naturally implies OCR (optical character recognition). The paper version of the dictionary comprises some 4,600 pages, densely printed in two columns. The dialects depicted are those of the British Isles, historically including the whole of Ireland as well as the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa and ‘colonial’ Englishes. The dictionary also includes what, from a later point of view, would be called ‘sociolects’, namely colloquial English, slang and cant, as well as ‘technical’ Englishes as used by professional groups such as farmers, miners and so on.