The longest entry in the OED is for a three-letter word. (Years later, Tolkien spoofed his editors in a comic fable called Farmer Giles of Ham.) 9. "I learned more in those two years than in any other equal period of my life,” Tolkien later said. Tolkien worked for the dictionary, where he studied the etymology of Germanic words beginning with the letter W, composing drafts for words like waggle and wampum. According to Murray, Minor was the dictionary’s second most prolific contributor, even outdoing members of the full-time staff. Minor, a schizophrenic who was incarcerated at the Broadmoor Insane Asylum in Berkshire, England, after he fatally shot a man he (erroneously) believed had broken into his room. One volunteer who provided the OED with countless quotation slips was William C. One of the OED’s most prolific contributors was a murderer confined to an insane asylum. “The phenomenon is absolutely inexplicable.” The word was officially introduced in a 1933 supplement.
and electrotyped pages noticed the omission,” he said. “ot one of the 30 people (at least) who saw the work at various stages between MS.
(It fell down behind some books and the editors never noticed.) Murray was deeply embarrassed by his failure to include the word in the dictionary. Only one quotation slip-containing the word bondmaid-is known to have been lost. Only one word is known to have gone missing. Called the “Scriptorium,” this linguistic workshop contained 1029 pigeonholes that allowed Murray and his subeditors to arrange, sort, and file more than 1000 quotation slips each day. In 1885, to better organize the dictionary, Murray constructed a sunken shed made of corrugated iron to house the editors and their precious quotation slips. Murray built a shed for the OED's editors to work in. Murray was a linguistic superstar he was proficient in Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, Latin, Dutch, German, Flemish, and Danish and also had a solid grasp of Portuguese, Vaudois, Provençal, Celtic, Slavonic, Russian, Persian, Achaemenid Cuneiform, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic Arabic, Coptic, and Phoenician. James Murray, a philologist, took the helm as the dictionary’s principal editor in 1879 and remained in that position for the rest of his life (he died in 1915). Sir James Murray in his Scriptorium / Oxford English Dictionary // Public Domainĭr. James Murray helped the OED clean up its act. Swinburne (whose mastery of the English language earned him six nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature) mocked Furnivall’s club by calling it “Fartiwell and Co.” and “The Sh*tspeare Society.” Furnivall reached into his bag o' insults and said that Swinburne had, “the ear of a poetaster, hairy, thick and dull.” 5. OED co-founder Frederick Furnivall was a controversial figure.Īfter founding a controversy-riddled Shakespeare Society, Furnivall fell into a six-year feud with the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. All of the entries for the letter “H” somehow turned up in Italy. Slips for the letter “G” were nearly burned with somebody’s trash. All of the words starting with “Pa” went AWOL for 12 years and were eventually discovered in Ireland. Quotation slips were stuffed haphazardly into bags and went missing. Under his stewardship as editor, the dictionary was a mess. Very messy.įrederick Furnivall, one of the dictionary’s founders, was a visionary-but that vision did not extend to his organizational skills.
The first full volume was eventually published in 1928, more than 70 years after the society first came up with the idea. Knowing it would be a while until a completed book was ready, they began publishing unbound editions of the work-in-progress in 1884. Twenty-seven years later, the editors had successfully reached the word ant. Originally, the Philological Society predicted that the dictionary would take about 10 years to complete. It took more than 70 years to complete the first edition of the OED. By the time the first edition was published, more than 2000 volunteers had assisted the editors in its completion. Every day, volunteers mailed thousands of “quotation slips” from books, newspapers, and magazines. When the London Philological Society came up with the idea for a new dictionary of the English language in 1857, the editors decided it was necessary to enlist the help of the public and asked avid readers to send examples of sentences that could illuminate the meanings of different words. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was built on volunteer labor. As the English language continues to evolve, the dictionary has flourished and regularly added new words such as nothingburger, prepper, idiocracy, and fam. This year marks the 135th birthday of the Oxford English Dictionary (though the eminent reference book is hardly looking its age).