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The Oxford English Dictionary has been the last word
on words for over a century. But, as with a respected professor or admired parent, we
count on its wisdom and authority without thinking much about how it was acquired. What is
the history of the Oxford English Dictionary? Exploring its origins and development
will give new insight into this extraordinary, living document.
How it began
When the members of the Philological Society of London
decided, in 1857, that existing English language dictionaries were incomplete and
deficient, and called for a complete re-examination of the language from Anglo-Saxon times
onward, they knew they were embarking on an ambitious project. However, even they didn't
realize the full extent of the work they initiated, or how long it would take to achieve
the final result.
The project proceeded slowly after the Society's first grand
statement of purpose. Eventually, in 1879, the Society made an agreement with the Oxford
University Press and James A. H. Murray to begin work on a New English Dictionary
(as the Oxford English Dictionary was then known).
More Work Than They Thought
The new dictionary was planned as a four-volume, 6,400-page
work that would include all English language vocabulary from the Early Middle English
period (1150 AD) onward, plus some earlier words if they had continued to be used into
Middle English.
It was estimated that the project would be finished in
approximately ten years. Five years down the road, when Murray and his colleagues had only
reached as far as the word "ant", they realized it was time to reconsider their
schedule. It was not surprising that the project was taking longer than anticipated. Not
only are the complexities of the English language formidable, but it also never stops
evolving. Murray and his Dictionary colleagues had to keep track of new words and new
meanings of existing words at the same time that they were trying to examine the previous
seven centuries of the language's development.
Murray and his team did manage to publish the first part (or
"fascicle", to use the technical term) in 1884, but it was clear by this point
that a much more comprehensive work was required than had been imagined by the
Philological Society almost thirty years earlier.
One Step at a Time
Over the next four decades work on the Dictionary continued
and new editors joined the project. Murray now had a large team directed by himself, Henry
Bradley, W.A. Craigie, and C.T. Onions. These men worked steadily, producing fascicle
after fascicle until finally, in April, 1928, the last volume was published. Instead of
6,400 pages in four volumes, the Dictionary published under the imposing name A New
English Dictionary on Historical Principles - contained over 400,000 words and phrases
in ten volumes. Sadly, Murray did not live to see the completion of his great work; he
died in 1915. The work to which he had devoted his life represented an achievement
unprecedented in the history of publishing anywhere in the world. The Dictionary had taken
its place as the ultimate authority on the language.
Murray was born in 1827 in Denholm (between Hawick and
Jedburgh) in the lovely Scottish Border country. For two decades Murray had rapport and
respect for an American doctor living in England, Dr. W.C. Minor, who offered his
assistance in the gigantic undertaking of defining words. Murray welcomed co-operation
from the doctor who conscientiously examined and proposed definitions for the dictionary,
and then mailed them to Dr. Murray on notepaper with the heading of ‘Broadmoor.’
Murray never questioned the name of ‘Broadmoor’ assuming it to be an estate in
the rolling English countryside. Actually, it was a hospital for the criminally insane,
where Minor had been an inmate ever since killing a stranger in London.
Oxford English Dictionary
Sir James Murray
1837-1915
James Augustus Henry Murray
was born at Denholm, near Hawick, Roxburghshire, in 1837. He received his
early education at the parish school in his native village, and afterwards
at another school in the neighbourhood, where he acquired the rudiments of
Latin, French, and Greek. At the age of eighteen he became an assistant
master in the Hawick Grammar School, and, three years later, head master of
a school at Hawick called the ‘Subscription Academy’. Here he assiduously
pursued his studies, gaining a good working knowledge of several languages,
and some acquaintance with the researches both of native and foreign
scholars in the history of English and its relation to the kindred tongues.
He also devoted much attention to the study of the local dialect. His love
of knowledge, however, by no means confined itself to philology; indeed he
was accustomed to say that in early life he was much more strongly attracted
to natural science than to the studies to which in later years he was
chiefly devoted. There seems, indeed, to have been no branch of natural or
physical science of which he had not more than a merely elementary
knowledge, and even in advanced age a new discovery always excited his keen
interest. The Transactions of the Hawick Archaeological Society, of which he
was one of the founders, and for some time the secretary, contain many
papers from his pen on the history, antiquities, natural history, geology,
and languages of the Border Counties.
After some years spent in teaching at Hawick, he removed to London, where he
obtained a position in the Chartered Bank of India. His first wife died in
1864, and in 1867 he married Ada Agnes, daughter of George Ruthven of
Kendal. In 1870 he became a master in Mill Hill School, a position which he
held for fifteen years.
His residence in and near London gave him the opportunity of fre-quent
intercourse with the distinguished group of scholars—including Eurnivall,
Skeat, Sweet, and Richard Morris—who were zealously labouring in the
investigation of the history of the English language, and the publication
and illustration of the older English literature. By this circle Murray was
welcomed as a collaborator of extraordinary ability and attainments. To the
publications of the Early English Text Society he contributed editions of
The Minor Poems of Sir David Lyndesay (1871), The Complaynt of Scotland
(1874), and The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune (1875). For
several years he contributed largely to the columns of the Athenaeum. It was
in this journal, in a review of Skeat’s edition of the Anglo-Saxon and
Northumbrian Gospels (April 3,1875), that he published his brilliant
discovery of the relation between the Old English glosses in the Lindisfarne
MS. and those in the Rushworth MS.
In 1873 the Philological Society issued his memorable book on The Dialect of
the Southern Counties of Scotland, which may be said to have laid the
foundations of the scientific study of the local varieties of English
speech, and even at the present day remains in some respects an unsurpassed
model of methodical investigation in this department. The value of the work
did not consist solely in the large amount of accurate information which it
contained on its special subject. By its insistence on the true principles
of philological inquiry, which at that time were familiar in this country
only to a few, and by the illustration which those principles received in
their application to particular problems, it had an appreciable effect on
the progress of linguistic science in general. Written in a popular style,
it found not a few interested readers among those who had no acquaintance
with philology. The book received much favourable notice in the press, and
in 1874 the University of Edinburgh conferred on the author the degree of
LL.D, in recognition of its merit. His article on ‘English Language'
published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1878, though extending only to
twelve pages, was by far the most complete and accurate historical survey of
the subject that had up to that time appeared, and established the writer’s
reputation as one of the most accomplished scholars in English philology.
It was through his connexion with the Philological Society .that Murray was
led to undertake the gigantic task which absorbed his whole energies during
the last thirty-six years of his life. In 1857, at the suggestion of Dr.
Trench, then Dean of Westminster, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, the
Society had committed itself to the preparation of a great historical
dictionary of the English language, in which the whole literary vocabulary
from the middle of the twelfth century should, so far as possible, be
included, the history of every word with regard to changes of form and
meaning from the time of its earliest occurrence being recorded and
illustrated by dated quotations. The scheme was taken up with great
enthusiasm and energy, some hundreds of persons being induced to co-operate,
without fee or reward, in providing the body of quotations that was to serve
as the basis of the work. Mr. Herbert Coleridge, as the designated editor of
the dictionary, zealously devoted himself to the task of reducing to order
the ever-growing mass of material, but his early death in 1861 seemed to
threaten the collapse of the enterprise. Probably this would have ensued but
for the resolute zeal of Furni vail, who stepped into Coleridge’s place as
editor, encouraged the workers to continue their contributions, and
endeavoured, as far as his many occupations would permit, to grapple with
the enormous difficulty of arranging the accumulated quotations. After some
years he was obliged to give up the struggle; but he continued to cherish
the confident hope of being able to get the work taken in hand by some
scholar inspired by an enthusiasm equal to his own, and possessing the
indispensable qualifications in which he acknowledged himself to be lacking.
There was much excuse for those who thought it impossible that ‘the
Society’s Dictionary’, of which Furnivall was continually talking, would
ever see the light. To find a scholar qualified by knowledge and ability for
the work, and able and willing to devote to it the enormous amount of time
and effort that it would demand, might well seem hopeless; and even if this
difficulty were surmounted there remained another difficulty not less
formidable. It had come to be recognized that if the Dictionary was to
fulfil efficiently its intended purpose, it must be on a scale so large that
no ordinary publisher could be expected to undertake to bring it out. At
length Murray, who by the general consent of all who were interested in the
scheme was the only man capable of the work, was induced to accept the post
of editor, and in 1879 an agreement was made between the Philological
Society and the Delegates of the Oxford University Press, by which the
latter body took upon itself the burden of publication. The great collection
of quotation slips was removed to Mill Hill, an iron building, which became
well known as ‘ Dr. Murray’s Scriptorium ’, being erected in the editor’s
garden for its reception and the accommodation of the workers.
The activity displayed by Murray during the next few years cannot be
contemplated without amazement. When he came to examine the material
accumulated on his shelves, he found that, although amounting to a million
and a half of slips, it was utterly inadequate for its purpose. He therefore
at once set himself to enlist a new army of voluntary workers to supply its
deficiencies, and to aid in the preliminary arrangement of the continually
increasing mass. It was necessary to correspond constantly with these
outside helpers, to assign to them their respective shares in the work, to
instruct them in methods of operation, and to keep records of their
progress. All these labours, together with those, more immediately connected
with the preparation of copy for the press (including a large amount of
correspondence relating to scientific and technological points), had to be
carried on concurrently with the discharge of the editor’s duties as a
schoolmaster. To any one who can appreciate the magnitude of the task, and
the unfavourable conditions under which the editor laboured, it will seem
wonderful that it was possible to issue the first part of the Dictionary,
extending to the word Ant, and containing 352 pages, so early as January
1884.
This first instalment was at once recognized by all competent critics in
Europe and America as fully satisfying the high expectations that had been
formed. The value of the new historical method of treatment and the lucidity
of the typographical arrangement (then a novel feature in works of the kind,
though it has since been extensively copied) could not escape the notice of
any educated reader, though it was only the few that could adequately
appreciate the skilful presentation of the development of meaning in words,
or the greatness of the advance in scientific precision shown in the
etymological part of the work. In 1885 the second part {Ant—Batten} was
published, and Murray removed from Mill Hill to Oxford, in order to devote
his whole time to the Dictionary.
When Murray began his labours, it was estimated that the Dictionary would
extend at most to seven thousand pages, and might be completed by a single
editor, with only a few assistants, in something like ten years. It may well
be doubted whether he would not have refused to venture on the task if he
had foreseen that the work, though shared eventually with three other
editors, was destined to engross the remaining thirty-six years of his life,
and to be still unfinished after his death. In 1885 it was evident that the
original estimate of the time required for the completion of the Dictionary
had been far too sanguine. Still, when allowance wras made for the time
consumed in preliminary labours that would not need to be repeated, the
progress made seemed to encourage the hope that, under the more favourable
conditions now established, the end w’ould be reached well within the limits
of the nineteenth century. It was very soon found, however, that the first
two sections afforded no adequate measure of the difficulties to be
encountered in the ensuing portions of the work. The portion of the English
vocabulary hitherto dealt with included hardly any of those w’ords that have
come down from the earliest period of the language, developing in every
century an abundance of new meanings and constructions, which former
lexicographers had ignored, but which the plan of the new Dictionary
required to be accurately ascertained by the light of the quotations, and
arranged in genealogical order. The words beginning with ‘A’ include a
multitude (quite without parallel elsewhere) of classical derivatives
containing Greek and Latin prefixes; and though some of these words had an
interesting history that had never been fully exhibited, the vast majority
had been used in only one or two senses, to which sufficient justice had
been done by lexicographers from Johnson onwards. Under the letter ‘B’, as
in most other parts of the alphabet, a very large proportion of the words
can in an ordinary dictionary quite rightly be disposed of in a few lines,
but in an historical dictionary require elaborate treatment. It therefore
became necessary, if the completeness of exposition and illustration, which
was the peculiar merit of the published portions of the Dictionary, was to
be maintained, to exceed the limits of space originally contemplated.
Another serious difficulty was created by the daily increasing mass of
quotations. Although only a small proportion of these could be used, nothing
could be rejected without examination; and the new material constantly
revealed the existence of words and senses of words previously unknown. The
slowness of progress due to these causes was a source of grave
disappointment to the editor and to the authorities of the Oxford Press.
Long before the end of the letter ‘B’ had been reached, it was felt that the
work was too vast to be accomplished by a single responsible editor. It was
therefore decicjed that the present writer, after working for a year under
Dr. Murray’s supervision, should be entrusted with the production of a
separate part of the Dictionary, beginning with the letter ‘E’. My work as
independent editor began in 1889. The ten years once regarded as the
probable term for the completion of the Dictionary had passed, and the end
of the letter ‘C’ had not nearly been reached. It cannot have been without a
painful sense of disappointment that Murray found himself under the
necessity of resigning to an untried man a share in the direction of his
great undertaking; but he spared no pains to ensure that the quality of the
work should suffer as little as possible from the inexperience of his
colleague. I shall always remember with gratitude the abundant help which I
received from him in the shape of criticism of my earlier efforts, and
suggestion of the authorities to be consulted on points of science,
technology, or history.
Although the Dictionary had now two editors, each with his own staff of
assistants, the acceleration of its progress continued to fall short of what
was expected and desired. It is easy to perceive, after the event, that this
was inevitable. The addition of new quotations to the already unwieldy mass
continued to go on incessantly ; the advance of science and industry, and
the unexampled literary activity of the age, were daily bringing into use a
multitude of new words, and developing new applications of words, which
needed to be explained and traced to their sources; the historical treatment
of the older words became more and more difficult and voluminous as the gaps
in their record were filled up; and the constant struggle to prevent the
scale of the work from exceeding all permissible limits, with as little
sacrifice as possible of valuable illustrative matter, involved the
expenditure of many hours in labour that had no visible result. At the end
of the nineteenth century, when Dr. Murray had been at work for twenty
years, and his colleague for half as long, the Dictionary was still not half
finished. It had long been strongly urged by several persons that there was
need for the appointment of a third editor, and the Delegates of the
Clarendon Press were now fortunate enough to secure the services of Mr. W.
A. Craigie, a scholar perhaps uniquely qualified by ability and training for
the work, who is now Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University, but still
continues 4 his labours on the Dictionary. In 1913 a fourth editor was
appointed, Mr. C. T. Onions, a London graduate, who had been for twenty
years a member of the editorial staff.
The thirty years of Murray’s life in Oxford were spent in strenuous and
almost unceasing toil, wholly devoted to the one sole object. Except for
occasional illnesses, a brief yearly holiday, and one absence of some months
on a visit to South Africa, his daily labour of many hours went on without
interruption from year to year nearly to the end. He wrote no books or
articles, and, although he was a Fellow of the British Academy from its
foundation, and often attended its ! meetings, he never found time to
contribute to its Proceedings. He was an acceptable popular lecturer, but
the subject was always the Dictionary. He might, if he had so chosen, have
left many monuments of his great and various powers, but he thought it his
duty to devote his whole strength to the accomplishment of the one great
undertaking to which he had pledged himself. Murray’s services to
scholarship were recognized by a knighthood conferred in 1908, by honorary
degrees from eight universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, and by
membership of many learned societies. He was happy in his family life, and
enjoyed a rare exemption from bereavement, his wife and eleven children
having survived him. He had great cause for satisfaction in the distinctions
gained by his children; one of his sons is Sir Oswyn Murray, now Permanent
Secretary to the Admiralty.
In the year 1915 he was attacked by serious illness, and his life for a time
was despaired of. He made a wonderful recovery, and in June I found him
again hard at work, showing marked signs of physical weakness, but ready to
discuss etymological problems with his accustomed lucidity and acuteness.
There seemed to be reason to hope that he might still have some years of
work before him ; but he presumed too much on his recovered strength, and
his exertions brought on the illness from which he died on the 26th of July.
Until the hand of death was upon him he never ceased to cherish the hope of
living to celebrate the completion of the Dictionary. Although this crowning
satisfaction was denied him, he was permitted to see the work so far
advanced that there was no longer any cause to z fear that it might not be
carried through to the end; and he was able to take his full share in it
almost to the close of his life. Even in his last days the quality of his
workmanship would have done no discredit to his prime. The great English
dictionary will always be known chiefly by his name, with far stronger
reason than the great German dictionary bears the name of Grimm. It is to
his marvellous energy in the organization and direction of a new body of
readers that the work is indebted for by far the greater part of the vast
collection of material on which its value so largely depends. The portions
of the Dictionary for which he was personally responsible amount to about
one half of the whole, and in the quality of their workmanship leave all
earlier lexicography far behind. The colleagues who have shared and
continued his labours owe to his example not a little of what is best in
their own work. When the remaining part of the last volume is finished, the
Oxford English Dictionary will stand unrivalled in its completeness as a
record of the history of the vocabulary of a living language, and it is to
Murray far more than to any other man that the honour of this great
achievement will belong.
HENRY BRADLEY. |
