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| Seven of the twenty volumes of printed second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989) | |
| Country | United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Published | 1884–1928 (first edition) 1989 (second edition) Third edition in preparation[1] |
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world.[2][3] The second edition, comprising 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, was published in 1989.
Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but it was only in 1884 that it began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society. In 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the second edition was published.[1] Since 2000, compilation of a third edition of the dictionary has been underway, approximately half of which is complete as of 2018.[1]
The first electronic version of the dictionary was made available in 1988. The online version has been available since 2000, and as of April 2014 was receiving over two million visits per month. The third edition of the dictionary will most likely only appear in electronic form; the Chief Executive of Oxford University Press has stated that it is unlikely that it will ever be printed.[1][4][5]
Historical nature
As a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary features entries in which the earliest ascertainable recorded sense of a word, whether current or obsolete, is presented first, and each additional sense is presented in historical order according to the date of its earliest ascertainable recorded use.[6] Following each definition are several brief illustrating quotations presented in chronological order from the earliest ascertainable use of the word in that sense to the last ascertainable use for an obsolete sense, to indicate both its life span and the time since its desuetude, or to a relatively recent use for current ones.
The format of the OED‘s entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects. The forerunners to the OED, such as the early volumes of the Deutsches Wörterbuch, had initially provided few quotations from a limited number of sources, whereas the OED editors preferred larger groups of quite short quotations from a wide selection of authors and publications. This influenced later volumes of this and other lexicographical works.[7]
Entries and relative size
Diagram of the types of English vocabulary included in the OED, devised by James Murray, its first editor.
According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to “key in” the 59 million words of the OED second edition, 60 years to proofread them, and 540 megabytes to store them electronically.[8] As of 30 November 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary contained approximately 301,100 main entries. Supplementing the entry headwords, there are 157,000 bold-type combinations and derivatives;[9] 169,000 italicized-bold phrases and combinations;[10] 616,500 word-forms in total, including 137,000 pronunciations; 249,300 etymologies; 577,000 cross-references; and 2,412,400 usage quotations. The dictionary’s latest, complete print edition (second edition, 1989) was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, which required 60,000 words to describe some 430 senses. As entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000, then put in 2007, then run in 2011.[11][12][13]
Despite its considerable size, the OED is neither the world’s largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers‘ dictionary of the German language, begun in 1838 and completed in 1961. The first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca is the first great dictionary devoted to a modern European language (Italian) and was published in 1612; the first edition of Dictionnaire de l’Académie française dates from 1694. The official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española (produced, edited, and published by the Real Academia Española), and its first edition was published in 1780. The Kangxi dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716.[14]
History
| hideOxford English Dictionary Publications | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Publication date | Volume range | Title | Volume |
| 1888 | A and B | A New ED | Vol. 1 |
| 1893 | C | NED | Vol. 2 |
| 1897 | D and E | NED | Vol. 3 |
| 1900 | F and G | NED | Vol. 4 |
| 1901 | H to K | NED | Vol. 5 |
| 1908 | L to N | NED | Vol. 6 |
| 1909 | O and P | NED | Vol. 7 |
| 1914 | Q to Sh | NED | Vol. 8 |
| 1919 | Si to St | NED | Vol. 9/1 |
| 1919 | Su to Th | NED | Vol. 9/2 |
| 1926 | Ti to U | NED | Vol. 10/1 |
| 1928 | V to Z | NED | Vol. 10/2 |
| 1928 | All | NED | 10 vols. |
| 1933 | All | NED | Suppl.. |
| 1933 | All & sup. | Oxford ED | 13 vols. |
| 1972 | A | OED Sup. | Vol. 1 |
| 1976 | H | OED Sup. | Vol. 2 |
| 1982 | O | OED Sup. | Vol. 3 |
| 1986 | Sea | OED Sup. | Vol. 4 |
| 1989 | All | OED 2nd Ed. | 20 vols. |
| 1993 | All | OED Add. Ser. | Vols. 1–2 |
| 1997 | All | OED Add. Ser. | Vol. 3 |
Origins
The dictionary began as a Philological Society project of a small group of intellectuals in London (and unconnected to Oxford University):[15]:103–4,112 Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, who were dissatisfied with the existing English dictionaries. The society expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844,[16] but it was not until June 1857 that they began by forming an “Unregistered Words Committee” to search for words that were unlisted or poorly defined in current dictionaries. In November, Trench’s report was not a list of unregistered words; instead, it was the study On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries, which identified seven distinct shortcomings in contemporary dictionaries:[17]
- Incomplete coverage of obsolete words
- Inconsistent coverage of families of related words
- Incorrect dates for earliest use of words
- History of obsolete senses of words often omitted
- Inadequate distinction among synonyms
- Insufficient use of good illustrative quotations
- Space wasted on inappropriate or redundant content.
The society ultimately realized that the number of unlisted words would be far more than the number of words in the English dictionaries of the 19th century, and shifted their idea from covering only words that were not already in English dictionaries to a larger project. Trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary.[15]:107–8 Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips. Later the same year, the society agreed to the project in principle, with the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED).[18]:ix–x
Early editors
Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) played the key role in the project’s first months, but his appointment as Dean of Westminster meant that he could not give the dictionary project the time that it required. He withdrew and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor.[19]:8–9Frederick Furnivall, 1825–1910
On 12 May 1860, Coleridge’s dictionary plan was published and research was started. His house was the first editorial office. He arrayed 100,000 quotation slips in a 54 pigeon-hole grid.[19]:9 In April 1861, the group published the first sample pages; later that month, Coleridge died of tuberculosis, aged 30.[18]😡
Thereupon Furnivall became editor; he was enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but temperamentally ill-suited for the work.[15]:110 Many volunteer readers eventually lost interest in the project, as Furnivall failed to keep them motivated. Furthermore, many of the slips were misplaced.
Furnivall believed that, since many printed texts from earlier centuries were not readily available, it would be impossible for volunteers to efficiently locate the quotations that the dictionary needed. As a result, he founded the Early English Text Society in 1864 and the Chaucer Society in 1868 to publish old manuscripts.[18]:xii Furnivall’s preparatory efforts lasted 21 years and provided numerous texts for the use and enjoyment of the general public, as well as crucial sources for lexicographers, but they did not actually involve compiling a dictionary. Furnivall recruited more than 800 volunteers to read these texts and record quotations. While enthusiastic, the volunteers were not well trained and often made inconsistent and arbitrary selections. Ultimately, Furnivall handed over nearly two tons of quotation slips and other materials to his successor.[20]
In the 1870s, Furnivall unsuccessfully attempted to recruit both Henry Sweet and Henry Nicol to succeed him. He then approached James Murray, who accepted the post of editor. In the late 1870s, Furnivall and Murray met with several publishers about publishing the dictionary. In 1878, Oxford University Press agreed with Murray to proceed with the massive project; the agreement was formalized the following year.[15]:111–2 20 years after its conception, the dictionary project finally had a publisher. It would take another 50 years to complete.
Late in his editorship, Murray learned that a prolific reader named W. C. Minor was a criminal lunatic.[15]:xiii Minor was a Yale University-trained surgeon and military officer in the American Civil War, and was confined to Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane after killing a man in London. Minor invented his own quotation-tracking system, allowing him to submit slips on specific words in response to editors’ requests. The story of Murray and Minor later served as the central focus of The Surgeon of Crowthorne (US title: The Professor and the Madman[15]), a popular book about the creation of the OED. This book was then the basis for the 2019 film The Professor and the Madman, starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn.
Oxford editors
James Murray in the Scriptorium at Banbury Road
During the 1870s, the Philological Society was concerned with the process of publishing a dictionary with such an immense scope.[1] They had pages printed by publishers, but no publication agreement was reached; both the Cambridge University Press and the Oxford University Press were approached. The OUP finally agreed in 1879 (after two years of negotiating by Sweet, Furnivall, and Murray) to publish the dictionary and to pay Murray, who was both the editor and the Philological Society president. The dictionary was to be published as interval fascicles, with the final form in four volumes, totalling 6,400 pages. They hoped to finish the project in ten years.[19]:1A quotation slip as used in the compilation of the OED, illustrating the word flood.
Murray started the project, working in a corrugated iron outbuilding called the “Scriptorium” which was lined with wooden planks, book shelves, and 1,029 pigeon-holes for the quotation slips.[18]:xiii He tracked and regathered Furnivall’s collection of quotation slips, which were found to concentrate on rare, interesting words rather than common usages. For instance, there were ten times as many quotations for abusion as for abuse.[21] He appealed, through newspapers distributed to bookshops and libraries, for readers who would report “as many quotations as you can for ordinary words” and for words that were “rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar or used in a peculiar way”.[21] Murray had American philologist and liberal arts college professor Francis March manage the collection in North America; 1,000 quotation slips arrived daily to the Scriptorium and, by 1880, there were 2,500,000.[19]:15
The first dictionary fascicle was published on 1 February 1884—twenty-three years after Coleridge’s sample pages. The full title was A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society; the 352-page volume, words from A to Ant, cost 12s 6d.[19]:251 (or about $668.24 in 2013) The total sales were only 4,000 copies.[22]:169
The OUP saw that it would take too long to complete the work with unrevised editorial arrangements. Accordingly, new assistants were hired and two new demands were made on Murray.[19]:32–33 The first was that he move from Mill Hill to Oxford, which he did in 1885. Murray had his Scriptorium re-erected on his new property.[18]:xviiThe 78 Banbury Road, Oxford, house, erstwhile residence of James Murray, Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary
Murray resisted the second demand: that if he could not meet schedule, he must hire a second, senior editor to work in parallel to him, outside his supervision, on words from elsewhere in the alphabet. Murray did not want to share the work, feeling that he would accelerate his work pace with experience. That turned out not to be so, and Philip Gell of the OUP forced the promotion of Murray’s assistant Henry Bradley (hired by Murray in 1884), who worked independently in the British Museum in London beginning in 1888. In 1896, Bradley moved to Oxford University.[19]
Gell continued harassing Murray and Bradley with his business concerns—containing costs and speeding production—to the point where the project’s collapse seemed likely. Newspapers reported the harassment, particularly the Saturday Review, and public opinion backed the editors.[22]:182–83 Gell was fired, and the university reversed his cost policies. If the editors felt that the dictionary would have to grow larger, it would; it was an important work, and worth the time and money to properly finish.
Neither Murray nor Bradley lived to see it. Murray died in 1915, having been responsible for words starting with A–D, H–K, O–P, and T, nearly half the finished dictionary; Bradley died in 1923, having completed E–G, L–M, S–Sh, St, and W–We. By then, two additional editors had been promoted from assistant work to independent work, continuing without much trouble. William Craigie started in 1901 and was responsible for N, Q–R, Si–Sq, U–V, and Wo–Wy.[18]:xix The OUP had previously thought London too far from Oxford but, after 1925, Craigie worked on the dictionary in Chicago, where he was a professor.[18]:xix[19] The fourth editor was Charles Talbut Onions, who compiled the remaining ranges starting in 1914: Su–Sz, Wh–Wo, and X–Z.[23]
In 1919–1920, J. R. R. Tolkien was employed by the OED, researching etymologies of the Waggle to Warlock range;[24] later he parodied the principal editors as “The Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford” in the story Farmer Giles of Ham.[25]
By early 1894, a total of 11 fascicles had been published, or about one per year: four for A–B, five for C, and two for E.[18] Of these, eight were 352 pages long, while the last one in each group was shorter to end at the letter break (which eventually became a volume break). At this point, it was decided to publish the work in smaller and more frequent instalments; once every three months beginning in 1895 there would be a fascicle of 64 pages, priced at 2s 6d. If enough material was ready, 128 or even 192 pages would be published together. This pace was maintained until World War I forced reductions in staff.[18]:xx Each time enough consecutive pages were available, the same material was also published in the original larger fascicles.[18]:xx Also in 1895, the title Oxford English Dictionary was first used. It then appeared only on the outer covers of the fascicles; the original title was still the official one and was used everywhere else.[18]:xx