Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford Word Searchers
Nobel laureate to madman—the story of those who helped to create the OED
Readers of the past
When James Murray, original editor of the Oxford English Dictionary,
issued his ‘Appeal to the English-speaking and English-reading public’ in 1879,
the response was huge. Nearly 400 men and women offered their help during the
first six months, sending in over 80,000 snippets of information on pieces of
paper—‘dictionary slips’ as they are still known—giving the word in question
and a quotation to illustrate it. They combed the pages of newspapers, novels,
theological tracts, encyclopedias—every kind of literature—to discover examples
of words from the English language in use. From these examples, James
Murray and his fellow editors were able to write definitions and illustrate
them for the Oxford English Dictionary.
Who were Murray’s helpers? Readers, as they came to be known, were overwhelmingly
ordinary word-lovers, such as the elderly cleric who gave eight hours every
day to the job for two decades, or the Dutch man who declared it was the one
thing that kept him alive! Women were very actively involved, the Thompson sisters
of Liverpool alone contributing over 15,000 quotations.
‘A penny an hour’
It is arguable that had not Murray’s eleven children assisted in the work,
the Oxford English Dictionary would never have seen the light of day.
James Murray’s granddaughter Elisabeth wrote a famous book about her grandfather,
Caught in the Web of Words, in which she reveals that: ‘Dictionary slips
and their sorting became a major element in the lives of the Murray family…Every
afternoon the children went to the Scriptorium to collect some packets of recently
arrived slips. As each child reached an age when he or she could read, they
were pressed into service.’ Jowett, the youngest son, describes sorting slips
in the 1890s:
‘We received no pocket money as a matter of course, but had to earn it
by sorting slips. Hours and hours of our childhood were spent in this useful
occupation. The motive actuating us was purely mercenary; we wanted money
for Christmas or birthday presents, or to spend on our summer holidays,
& the only way to get it was to sort slips. We were paid according to
age, not according to skill or speed. The standard rate was one penny an
hour, but this rose to two-pence, three pence, or even sixpence as you mounted
up in your teens.’
The oldest son, Harold, helped his father before going to University, and alone
provided 27,000 quotations.
Broadmoor’s famous word-searcher
One of Murray’s most famous readers was Dr William Chester Minor. The relationship
between the Calvinist lexicographer and the American convicted murderer, incarcerated
for life in Broadmoor Asylum for Criminal Lunatics in Crowthorne, Berkshire,
is now widely known, due to Simon Winchester’s bestselling book, The Surgeon
of Crowthorne (entitled The Professor and the Madman in the USA).
Murray wrote that in terms of contribution to the Dictionary by volunteer
readers, ‘the supreme position is certainly held by Dr W. C. Minor of Broadmoor.
So enormous have been Dr Minor’s contributions that we could easily have illustrated
the last four centuries from his quotations alone.’ Much of Minor’s work will
still appear in the Dictionary when its revision is completed almost
a century after his death—a lasting monument to his efforts to turn the tragedy
of his circumstances to profitable account.
A lawyer, a Texan botanist…who are today’s readers?
Contributors today come from many walks to life. From a Nobel Laureate to an
expert on maritime words who is a stevedoring superintendent, and a former cryptographer—all
help to extend the Dictionary’s record of English.
What is it like to be a reader? One of Oxford’s most valued readers is Stuart
Y. Silverstein, a successful Los Angeles lawyer and author of The Uncollected
Dorothy Parker (1999), who has sent in several hundred citations, particularly
on words coined, or used by, Parker and the New York Algonquin set. Silverstein
studied such words as ‘pastrami’, ‘movie star’, and ‘L.A.’, and offered quotations
that pre-date existing ones in the Dictionary by as much as twenty years.
What sort of word finds give Silverstein the most pleasure? ‘There is a powerful
instinct to wave the flag; I’ll freely admit it’s often a kick to find a pungent
Americanism—particularly something that is colloquial or slang; even more particularly
if there is no previous entry.’ Why does he do it? ‘Adults usually aren’t allowed
to search for buried treasure; we were supposed to outgrow those fantasies when
we were kids. Well, sorry but the rules don’t necessarily apply. It’s great
fun to discover a buried treasure at any age, to find something that was hidden
by the mists of time. Perhaps we can’t just go out and dig up treasure chests
filled with jewels and doubloons, but we can find more subtle, and perhaps more
valuable, treasures with a bit of discipline and resource. That being said,
there is also a profound and serious element to this. Yes, it is fun, great
fun, but it is also a great privilege.’
The Texan and the ‘tar baby’
‘John Williams became a plainclothes detective the day he wrapped a tar baby
in plain brown paper and mailed it to Oxford, England’, reported the Austin
(Texas) American Statesman on 25 November 2000. Williams, a botanist
turned lawyer, found the earliest known use of ‘tar baby’ in the English language
in a magazine dated 1870 - published 11 years before Joel Chandler Harris’s
first Uncle Remus book described Brer Rabbit getting stuck in a tar-baby
trap. Williams spotted the 1999 ‘Appeal’ for new word information and mailed
his findings to Oxford. Jesse Sheidlower, American Editor of the Oxford
English Dictionary says: ‘ We realized we had a real treasure on our hands.
It was clearly absolutely first-rate material. It was exceptionally well done.
Williams sent in more words and I got in touch and asked him if he would be
willing to contribute in a more structured way.’ Williams has now become one
of the OED’s American contributors, specializing in black folklore and
late-19th and early-20th century Texas folklore. Examples of his contributions
include ‘broom scratch’ an early Texan word describing a poor person’s musical
performance using a broom handle placed between the feet and vibrated against
the floor, and ‘bumblebee cotton’, another Texan word for tiny cotton growing
only as big as a bumblebee.
Silverstein and Williams are two present-day contributors to the riches of
the OED that began with the Murray children and a host of ordinary people
from around the world more than a century ago. Dictionary-making now, as then,
is an endeavour to which everyone can contribute.
Would you like to contribute words to
the Oxford English Dictionary?
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