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Like the Bible, the dictionary is a book of weighty authority, and the Oxford English Dictionary is the most weighty and authoritative of all. Conceived in 1857 and published in its first edition between 1884 and 1928, the OED comprised 15,488 pages, 50 million words overall, and two million illustrative quotations. Today, in its updated and uploaded form, the OED defines some 600,000 lemmas, tracing word-by-word the history of our enormous and ever-changing language.
Lost for Words: |
As a masterpiece of imperial English culture, the OED has been the subject of extensive criticism and analysis. In Caught in the Web of Words (1977), James Murray's granddaughter recounted the sacrificial devotion of Murray in his 36 years as chief editor of the dictionary. In Empire of Words (1994), John Willinsky documented the Victorian bias toward great white men built into the dictionary. In The Professor and the Madman (1999), Simon Winchester told the story of the murderer in the insane asylum who contributed more than anyone knew to the making of the OED, and in The Meaning of Everything (2003), Winchester completed his story of the OED with anecdotes and personal portraits. Beyond these popular works, numerous scholarly articles and books have uncovered omissions, antedatings, and corrections to the dictionary.
So is there more "hidden history" to be revealed? According to Lynda Mugglestone, there certainly is. Behind the OED's authoritative text is a history of composition, complete with personalities, debates, and prejudices that shaped its first edition. How were definitions written? How were quotations selected for inclusion? How was spelling and pronunciation decided upon? Does the OED really trace the history of every English word that has ever existed? These questions are the subject of Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary. Mugglestone has closely examined the editing process of the OED in a way that has not been done before. By poring over a vast archive of annotated proof sheets, as well as letters, reviews, articles, and speeches, she has filled in many details about the editorial decisions that shaped the dictionary at the final stages of publication.
Mugglestone's research supports much of what we already know about James A. H. Murray. Like Samuel Johnson, he was "a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer." Murray dreamed of creating a fully descriptive, exhaustive, historical record of the language. With the impartiality of a scientist, he would document the story of every English word, whether low or high, old or new, common or esoteric. Such a biography of the language would be a "historical monument" fit for a great nation. But alas, as Mugglestone puts it, "The lexicon could not, in practice, be encompassed by the lexicographer." Although Murray wished to create an ideal dictionary, he was forced by budget constraints and cultural pressures to edit the text in more prescriptive directions.
The annotated proof sheets reveal that editing primarily meant cutting. Murray was constantly obligated to compromise his descriptive ideal, deleting quotations, definitions, and entire entries. Mugglestone discusses the rationale behind the deletions, confirming that literary language tended to be favored over vulgarisms, established vocabulary over neologisms. Thus quotations from daily newspapers were cut, while the wisdom of poets and bishops was kept. "Linguipotence" was retained because it was a coinage of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, while "greyhoundy" was omitted, being used only in the popular journal Black and White. "Condom" was omitted without much question, while some of the most potent four-letter words were regretfully suppressed after lengthy debate. "Enthuse" was labeled "colloquial," and "gent" was censured as "vulgar." The editors made quite a few concessions to Victorian sensibilities.
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