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Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED
What is the meaning of a word? Most readers turn to the dictionary for authoritative meanings and correct usage. But what is the source of authority in dictionaries? Some dictionaries employ panels of experts to fix meaning and prescribe usage, others rely on derivation through etymology. But perhaps no other dictionary has done more to standardize the English language than the formidable twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary in its 1989 second edition. Yet this most Victorian of modern dictionaries derives its meaning by citing the earliest known usage of words and by demonstrating shades of meaning through an awesome database of over five million examples of usage in context. In this fascinating study, John Willinsky challenges the authority of this imperial dictionary, revealing many of its inherent prejudices and questioning the assumptions of its ongoing revision. "Clearly, the OED is no simple record of the language `as she is spoke, '" Willinsky writes. "It is a selective representation reflecting certain elusive ideas about the nature of the English language and people. Empire of Words reveals, by statistic and table, incident and anecdote, how serendipitous, judgmental, and telling a task editing a dictionary such as the OED can be."
Willinsky analyzes the favored citation records from the three editorial periods of the OED's compilation: the Victorian, imperial first edition; the modern supplement; and the contemporary second edition composed on an electronic database. He reveals shifts in linguistic authority: the original edition relied on English literature and, surprisingly, on translations, reference works, and journalism; the modern editions have shifted emphasis to American sources and periodicals while continuing to neglect women, workers, and other English-speaking countries.
Willinsky's dissection of dictionary entries exposes contradictions and ambiguities in the move from citation to definition. He points out that Shakespeare, the most frequently cited authority in the OED, often confounds the dictionary's simple sense of meaning with his wit and artfulness. He shows us how the most famous four-letter words in the language found their way through a belabored editorial process, sweating and grunting, into the supplement to the OED. Willinsky sheds considerable light on how the OED continues to shape the English language through the sometimes idiosyncratic, often biased selection of citations by hired readers and impassioned friends of the language.
Anyone who is fascinated with words and language will find Willinsky's tour through the OED a delightful and stimulating experience. No one who reads this book will ever feel quite the same about Murray's web of words.
Willinsky analyzes the favored citation records from the three editorial periods of the OED's compilation: the Victorian, imperial first edition; the modern supplement; and the contemporary second edition composed on an electronic database. He reveals shifts in linguistic authority: the original edition relied on English literature and, surprisingly, on translations, reference works, and journalism; the modern editions have shifted emphasis to American sources and periodicals while continuing to neglect women, workers, and other English-speaking countries.
Willinsky's dissection of dictionary entries exposes contradictions and ambiguities in the move from citation to definition. He points out that Shakespeare, the most frequently cited authority in the OED, often confounds the dictionary's simple sense of meaning with his wit and artfulness. He shows us how the most famous four-letter words in the language found their way through a belabored editorial process, sweating and grunting, into the supplement to the OED. Willinsky sheds considerable light on how the OED continues to shape the English language through the sometimes idiosyncratic, often biased selection of citations by hired readers and impassioned friends of the language.
Anyone who is fascinated with words and language will find Willinsky's tour through the OED a delightful and stimulating experience. No one who reads this book will ever feel quite the same about Murray's web of words.
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264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
83 people want to read
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September 26, 2022
“Every empire … tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.” Edward W. Said.
I will give a brief summary of the history of the OED that is detailed in John Willinksy's 'Empire of Words: the reign of the OED' 1994 followed by a more in-depth look at the exclusions of the first and second editions and a look at what's happening now. All page numbers given refer to Willinsky's book.
HISTORY of the OED - Oxford English Dictionary
The idea of a dictionary that gave the history of the meanings of words from their earliest publication to the present was introduced in London in the middle of the C19th by a churchman Dr R.C.Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, who promoted the idea through fine oratory in which he argued for a critical and rational lexicography mixed with spiritual ideals (Gods word, he thought, was inscribed in the English Language!). Amongst his class it was a commonplace at the time to think of ‘foreign’ tongues as savage, decadent, impoverished and inferior. English was set above the perceived barbarism of most other languages. Trench critiqued the methods of previous dictionaries, especially Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary of 1755, which was personal and idiosyncratic. (p.16 gives a list of 6 points of his critique of existing dictionaries)
The greatness of English was to be established against the competing claims of Latin, French and German that had emerged from the Enlightenment, by a systematic lexicographic project of immense and utopian ambition. But both Trench and the main later editor A.H. Murray were against the idea of a dictionary as a guide to proper usage and they intended it to be rather an inventory of all words and their historical origins. But each word was accompanied by at least one citation to show its earliest use and the variety of ways the words was used. The difference between illustration and definition and promoting ‘good usage’ is difficult to maintain in practice, and especially so in view of the unassailable authority that the monumental dictionary accrued.
This ambitious project was taken on by The Philological Society in 1857. The cohort of members who took an active role, reading to find words and citations, numbered an impressive 762 enthusiastic amateurs (rather than the academics and dons who we might expect to take on such a high profile task). These amateurs were inevitably middle class but did include 278 women and 103 Americans. Compared with the elitist French Academy, who had completed their famous dictionary in 1694, it was remarkably open and democratic. It was the collective energy and voluntary reading efforts to collect words and write down illustrative quotations on ‘citation slips or cards’, that formed the building bricks of this gargantuan project. By 1888 the chief editor James Murray was to thank 1300 volunteer readers.
Four editors led the project at first but in 1879 James Murray stepped into the leadership role and dedicated all his energies to the project until his death in 1915 - some years before the first OED was finally completed and published in 10 volumes in 1928. Murray was working on the letter ’T’ when he died. He was helped in this task by his 11 children that he had with Ada Agnes Ruthven working in a corrugated iron shed in his garden in Oxford that he called The Scriptorium.
Dr Trench had long departed and when Murray took the reigns and he “returned to a Lockean empiricism which invested its authority and meaning in those who sought to write the course of English thought and imagination.” p.40 In reality this was blinkered to the language of the many and focused its attention on the literature of the few, whilst professing to aim to record the language in toto. Murray was kept at arms length by the Dons of Oxford University in spite of his contract with Oxford University Press. This may have helped him to maintain a liberalism that was not typical of the Oxford academics of the period.
Oxford University Press had got its income from its legal monopoly (with Cambridge) on the Authorised version of the English Bible. This, along with The Book of Common Prayer provided its income from 1837 to 1847. 4.5 million copies of the bible were printed to be distributed throughout the colonies. This market fell away at the end of the C19th and later in the C20th was replaced with the various versions of the Oxford English Dictionaries or OED.
Murray realised that to make the dictionary inclusive and more credible as a comprehensive record of the language there had to be reading and citations beyond the literary canon of the Great Works. In fact there were other forces at work that wanted a national dictionary to record a version of English that promoted ideals of the superiority of the English and their written culture. This was done by looking firstly to the great literary works with the idea that this would capture the most elevated uses of words and leave out the more ‘debased’ uses of words. Shakespeare was already established as a heroic figure of English genius and there were already concordances of his work that gave a easy guide to his language and this made it easy for him to be the source of the majority of early citations, along with Chaucer. William Shakespeare wrote at the time when English had just triumphed over Latin, French and Italian in a competition to be the arbiter of the intellect in the UK.
MORE about James A.H. Murray
The main editor of the early dictionary who gave his life to the work, James Murray, had a philological interest in his own Scottish background which gave him insight into how Scottish oral dialects informed literary word formation. Murray was an inclusionist by nature and saw the power of the dictionary being hampered if it was a crude selective ideological tool and so he promoted wide reading in search of words. Murray was pragmatic, and he accepted the Literary Canon as the spine of the citations (esp. Shakespeare) but also campaigned for a widening from the authority of canonic literary sources to include words found in journalism, periodicals, popular reference works and the wider products of the publishing industry.
Although Murray was a progressive his project still “succumbed to compromise and establishment assimilation.” Roy Harris quoted on p.7 This rings true with my own experience of how powerful that assimilation is, with the only alternative being cast into the wilderness of inconsequence.
Murray, like Johnson before him, was against fixing the language and making the dictionary hostile to word creation (p.44). But when you have the accumulated authority of the OED distilled into the satchel size single volume concise edition the effect is to some extent unavoidable.
The OED was a great triumph for this self-taught Victorian scholar. The work that had started in 1850s was published in parts (A - Ant being the first.) until the alphabet was completed and the full work was published in 10 volumes in 1928. It had used five million citation slips - a third of them which are used to authorise the definitions of c300,000 words. Arguably James Murray did carry the torch of a radical Humanism desire for a reasoned approach to Historical accuracy and an Enlightenment view of how knowledge should be made (ie systematic approach to knowledge formation) p.191
For the OED “holding the line against the ‘barbarian’ becomes its own source of authority”. p.177 This means it inevitably allies with the ‘authority’ of the oppressor class. Will its new almost industrial scale of production and global reach be able to dissipate the influence of the capital that sustains it? Especially when it comes to the compact editions carried into the classroom…
The C18th idea that “The truth will out” via the power of printing in a free market - to power a rational democracy (e.g. Habermas) is maybe in question now that the paternal coterie of publishers is both increasingly corporatised and is no longer the main channel for the communication of ideas. The internet seems a bit shaky when it comes to promoting truth.
Willinsky’s book, the main source above, is great and stuffed full of interesting thinking. However the quotes above may give the wrong impression that it’s more radical in tone than it is. For every strong critical quote as above there are three that are placatory to the centre. Like most academic or even serious books if is infused with good manners and good taste, taking a balanced view.
This review is continued with a detailed look at the exclusions, notes on contexts and updates on todays OED
https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com...
I will give a brief summary of the history of the OED that is detailed in John Willinksy's 'Empire of Words: the reign of the OED' 1994 followed by a more in-depth look at the exclusions of the first and second editions and a look at what's happening now. All page numbers given refer to Willinsky's book.
HISTORY of the OED - Oxford English Dictionary
The idea of a dictionary that gave the history of the meanings of words from their earliest publication to the present was introduced in London in the middle of the C19th by a churchman Dr R.C.Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, who promoted the idea through fine oratory in which he argued for a critical and rational lexicography mixed with spiritual ideals (Gods word, he thought, was inscribed in the English Language!). Amongst his class it was a commonplace at the time to think of ‘foreign’ tongues as savage, decadent, impoverished and inferior. English was set above the perceived barbarism of most other languages. Trench critiqued the methods of previous dictionaries, especially Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary of 1755, which was personal and idiosyncratic. (p.16 gives a list of 6 points of his critique of existing dictionaries)
"By the time OED-originator R. C. Trench was writing in the 1850s and onwards, the connection between language and patriotism was transparent. On the first pages of English Past and Present, one of his two collections of popular lectures on language, reprinted many times during OED’s long compilation, Trench asks:https://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/oed-edi...
The love of our own language, what is it in fact but the love of our country expressing itself in one particular direction? If the great acts of that nation to which we belong are precious to us, if we feel ourselves made greater by their greatness, summoned to a nobler life by the nobleness of Englishmen who have already lived and died…what can more clearly point out their native land and ours as having fulfilled a glorious past, as being destined for a glorious future, than that they should have acquired for themselves and for those who came after them a clear, a strong, an harmonious, a noble language?"
The greatness of English was to be established against the competing claims of Latin, French and German that had emerged from the Enlightenment, by a systematic lexicographic project of immense and utopian ambition. But both Trench and the main later editor A.H. Murray were against the idea of a dictionary as a guide to proper usage and they intended it to be rather an inventory of all words and their historical origins. But each word was accompanied by at least one citation to show its earliest use and the variety of ways the words was used. The difference between illustration and definition and promoting ‘good usage’ is difficult to maintain in practice, and especially so in view of the unassailable authority that the monumental dictionary accrued.
The dictionary was to reaffirm “all those elements of culture, religion, geography, and race that had long figured in the thinking of the English, but had not been realised on such a scale in earlier periods.” p.24
This ambitious project was taken on by The Philological Society in 1857. The cohort of members who took an active role, reading to find words and citations, numbered an impressive 762 enthusiastic amateurs (rather than the academics and dons who we might expect to take on such a high profile task). These amateurs were inevitably middle class but did include 278 women and 103 Americans. Compared with the elitist French Academy, who had completed their famous dictionary in 1694, it was remarkably open and democratic. It was the collective energy and voluntary reading efforts to collect words and write down illustrative quotations on ‘citation slips or cards’, that formed the building bricks of this gargantuan project. By 1888 the chief editor James Murray was to thank 1300 volunteer readers.
Four editors led the project at first but in 1879 James Murray stepped into the leadership role and dedicated all his energies to the project until his death in 1915 - some years before the first OED was finally completed and published in 10 volumes in 1928. Murray was working on the letter ’T’ when he died. He was helped in this task by his 11 children that he had with Ada Agnes Ruthven working in a corrugated iron shed in his garden in Oxford that he called The Scriptorium.
Dr Trench had long departed and when Murray took the reigns and he “returned to a Lockean empiricism which invested its authority and meaning in those who sought to write the course of English thought and imagination.” p.40 In reality this was blinkered to the language of the many and focused its attention on the literature of the few, whilst professing to aim to record the language in toto. Murray was kept at arms length by the Dons of Oxford University in spite of his contract with Oxford University Press. This may have helped him to maintain a liberalism that was not typical of the Oxford academics of the period.
Oxford University Press had got its income from its legal monopoly (with Cambridge) on the Authorised version of the English Bible. This, along with The Book of Common Prayer provided its income from 1837 to 1847. 4.5 million copies of the bible were printed to be distributed throughout the colonies. This market fell away at the end of the C19th and later in the C20th was replaced with the various versions of the Oxford English Dictionaries or OED.
“It was part of that particularly. English claim on science and civilisation, merit and accomplishment, that would take its proud stand amid what Haddon identifies as the 'barbarousness' of the world" p.6
Murray realised that to make the dictionary inclusive and more credible as a comprehensive record of the language there had to be reading and citations beyond the literary canon of the Great Works. In fact there were other forces at work that wanted a national dictionary to record a version of English that promoted ideals of the superiority of the English and their written culture. This was done by looking firstly to the great literary works with the idea that this would capture the most elevated uses of words and leave out the more ‘debased’ uses of words. Shakespeare was already established as a heroic figure of English genius and there were already concordances of his work that gave a easy guide to his language and this made it easy for him to be the source of the majority of early citations, along with Chaucer. William Shakespeare wrote at the time when English had just triumphed over Latin, French and Italian in a competition to be the arbiter of the intellect in the UK.
MORE about James A.H. Murray
The main editor of the early dictionary who gave his life to the work, James Murray, had a philological interest in his own Scottish background which gave him insight into how Scottish oral dialects informed literary word formation. Murray was an inclusionist by nature and saw the power of the dictionary being hampered if it was a crude selective ideological tool and so he promoted wide reading in search of words. Murray was pragmatic, and he accepted the Literary Canon as the spine of the citations (esp. Shakespeare) but also campaigned for a widening from the authority of canonic literary sources to include words found in journalism, periodicals, popular reference works and the wider products of the publishing industry.
“James Murray opened the door for the daily newspaper, the pamphlet, the advertisement…” p.174
Although Murray was a progressive his project still “succumbed to compromise and establishment assimilation.” Roy Harris quoted on p.7 This rings true with my own experience of how powerful that assimilation is, with the only alternative being cast into the wilderness of inconsequence.
Murray, like Johnson before him, was against fixing the language and making the dictionary hostile to word creation (p.44). But when you have the accumulated authority of the OED distilled into the satchel size single volume concise edition the effect is to some extent unavoidable.
The OED was a great triumph for this self-taught Victorian scholar. The work that had started in 1850s was published in parts (A - Ant being the first.) until the alphabet was completed and the full work was published in 10 volumes in 1928. It had used five million citation slips - a third of them which are used to authorise the definitions of c300,000 words. Arguably James Murray did carry the torch of a radical Humanism desire for a reasoned approach to Historical accuracy and an Enlightenment view of how knowledge should be made (ie systematic approach to knowledge formation) p.191
For the OED “holding the line against the ‘barbarian’ becomes its own source of authority”. p.177 This means it inevitably allies with the ‘authority’ of the oppressor class. Will its new almost industrial scale of production and global reach be able to dissipate the influence of the capital that sustains it? Especially when it comes to the compact editions carried into the classroom…
The C18th idea that “The truth will out” via the power of printing in a free market - to power a rational democracy (e.g. Habermas) is maybe in question now that the paternal coterie of publishers is both increasingly corporatised and is no longer the main channel for the communication of ideas. The internet seems a bit shaky when it comes to promoting truth.
Willinsky’s book, the main source above, is great and stuffed full of interesting thinking. However the quotes above may give the wrong impression that it’s more radical in tone than it is. For every strong critical quote as above there are three that are placatory to the centre. Like most academic or even serious books if is infused with good manners and good taste, taking a balanced view.
This review is continued with a detailed look at the exclusions, notes on contexts and updates on todays OED
https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com...
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August 6, 2009"ill-tempered, politically correct" -- Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman
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