ebook img

The making of the Oxford English dictionary PDF

646 Pages·2016·14.755 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview The making of the Oxford English dictionary

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/07/16, SPi The Making of the OxFORD ENgLISh DICTIONARy OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/07/16, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/07/16, SPi ThE MAkINg OF T hE Oxford English Dictionary PETER gILLIvER 1 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/07/16, SPi 1 great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the Uk and in certain other countries © Peter gilliver 2016 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2016 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above you must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New york, Ny 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2015959816 ISBN 978–0–19–928362–0 Printed in great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/07/16, SPi For Robin, sine quo non OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/07/16, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/07/16, SPi Contents Preface ix List of illustrations xv List of capsules xix 1. Beginnings: to 1861 1 2. Furnivall’s Dictionary: 1861–1875 41 Interlude. The work of Furnivall’s sub-editors 59 3. Manoeuvres: 1876–1879 81 4. The road to Ant: 1879–1884 109 5. The Dictionary divides: 1884–1887 177 6. Storm and stress: 1888–1897 208 Interlude. Method: from quotation slip to published entry 260 7. And then there were four: 1897–1915 278 8. After twilight: 1915–1923 330 9. Limping over the finishing line: 1923–1933 361 10. Interregnum: 1933–1957 414 11. Learning to swim (again): 1957–1972 453 12. Second Supplement to Second Edition: 1972–1989 493 13. Towards OED3: 1989– 550 Guide to abbreviations and sources 587 Bibliography 591 Index 605 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/07/16, SPi Preface The Making of the O.E.D. would be a good subject for a book in due course—by some retired lexicographer.1 There are already numerous histories of the Oxford English Dictionary; indeed, such accounts began to be written long before the first edition of the Dictionary was completed in 1928.2 There is even one history called ‘The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary’.3 The Dictionary itself, in both its first and second editions, included an account of its compilation,4 and much historical material is available on the OED’s own website. It nevertheless seemed to me, sometime in the late 1990s, that there was room for another history. I had already begun to explore some of the Dictionary’s archives in relation to my interest in the work done by J. R. R. Tolkien as one of henry Bradley’s assistants just after the First World War;5 subsequently I also contributed a biographical appendix6 to a volume of essays on the Dictionary (mainly with reference to the first edition). The absorbing task of researching the latter revealed to me just how much more there was to say about the thousands of individuals whose combined efforts created the OED than was available in the existing published histories. The fact that I was one of these individuals, and indeed belonged to a small and fortunate subgroup of them—I have been a member of the Dictionary’s staff since 1987—made me realize that I could bring a distinctive perspective to writing about the project. Most people encounter and interact with the OED as readers, consulting individual entries or definitions; my main mode of interaction with it over nearly thirty years has been as a lexicographer, constantly engaged in creating and remaking its text. First-hand 1 Comment, apparently by Robert Burchfield, in an unsigned memo to Dan Davin dated 2 July 1975 (OUPA(u)). 2 The first account which was available as a separate publication was arguably the pamphlet issued by OUP in 1913 entitled ‘A Brief Account of the Oxford Dictionary’: see p. 334 n. 18. Numerous earlier accounts appeared as magazine articles or sections of longer works, including many published before the Dictionary itself began to be issued. 3 A short pamphlet by John Cowley with this title, originally issued as an insert in the Clarendonian (a magazine for OUP employees, of which he was then editor), was printed by the Press in 1972 for publicity purposes; copies are preserved in OUPA. 4 The history included with the reissue of the first edition (Craigie 1933a) was reprinted with only minor modifications in the second edition. 5 In 1992 I gave a conference paper on my findings, subsequently published as gilliver (1995). 6 gilliver (2000).

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.