Skip to main content

Oxford English Dictionary

The historical English dictionary

An unsurpassed guide for researchers in any discipline to the meaning, history, and usage of over 500,000 words and phrases across the English-speaking world.

Find out more about OED

Understanding entries

Glossaries, abbreviations, pronunciation guides, frequency, symbols, and more

Explore resources

Historical Thesaurus

Explore different words used for the same concept or meaning over time

About the thesaurus

Personal account

Change display settings, save searches and purchase subscriptions

Account features

Word of the day

brick venereal

adjective
Chiefly Australian (colloquial and humorous). Of or relating to a suburban housing development characterized by houses having homogeneous facings of brick veneer, in a style perceived as ugly and ubiquitous. Frequently in brick venereal disease: the proliferation of brick veneer.