That’s not really true. The OED is a historical/scientific work. Its goal is to describe the English language, not to influence it. Things are not described as

That’s not really true. The OED is a historical/scientific work. Its goal is to describe the English language, not to influence it. Things are not described as proper or improper in the OED, though they may of course be described as colloquially, nonstandard, regional, etc., which are not value judgments. A lot of words, especially the ones that have been around for a while, have absolutely tons of variant spellings listed, most of which a normal literate modern person has never heard of. Source: I have an OED subscription and look at it regularly.