OXFORD DICTIONARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 171, 21 July 1928, Page 6 (Supplement)

OXFORD DICTIONARY.

FIFTY YEARS' WORK COMPLETED. fHJE MADMAN WHO HELPED. ROMANCE OF IA'TTIUSLYiSM. .Dr. .fohn-on, v* iiose virt ue'' as a dictionary Mnhr in.'luiled ;l pungent humour if not complete objectivity, ,]rfirc'l a lexicographer at- a. "liarml-.-s drudgo. And, aUnoiigli t!,ere must inevitably bo much drudgery entailed in compiling a dictionary, for many the work is tlie consummation of romance »T)d w ortny of complete and absorbing •nthnsiasm. A body of such, enthusiasts have recently had the in-ten.-c sati.-i'a. f ion of giving the final pa ecu of the "Oxford English Dictionary" to the, world, and the completion of this vast work is an event of much more than national importance. The completed dictionary cast £.100.0(M to compile, ami it will cost oOgs to bnv. Nevertheless, for its bulk it i-j probably tho ehea-pest book ou tiie market, since it contains more than 400,000 words, nearly two million quotations, uses 178 miles of type, weighs about 2001b, and covers a jjeriod of twelve centuries. It will, of course, be always identifiable as the "0.E.D," but its full title is "A Now English Dictionary on Historical Principles Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society, Edited by James A. H. Murray, with the Assistance o£ ManyScholars and Men of Science." Three Decades to Start. The '0.E.D." haa taken nearly 50 years to complete. There were 30 years of preparatory work before it was even begun. Dr. Murray conceived the idea when he was a master at Mill Hill School. He and his joint editors, Dr. Bradley. Dr. Craigbe and Dr. C. T. Onions, have had tiie help of a great many assistants and an army of voluntary correspondents, and the enterprise ha.s been liuancied by the University of Oxford through its Clarendon Press. In this co-operation of wealth and enthusiastic industry is to bo found one of the finest examples extant of public scrvice. Perhaps this quality in not so rare as one might believe; it can be found, if one looks for it, in the realms ' of medicine, religion, philanthropy and science. But in few cases is it more important or less conspicuous than i:i this fi"ld of academic research. Dr. Johnson was content to remain a "harmless drudge," working in poverty for many years to produce his amazing lexicon; Dr. Murray, so exact was he, devoted six months to hard work on the one little four-lettened word "that." And were all literature to be lost, it would be possible from these gigantic volumes over which Dr. Murray for so long presided to reconstruct in much detail the and customs of our race since the time of King Alfred's great-grand-father.

Thero have been many dictionaries, ami the compilation of the *'0.E.D." has boon celebrated in Oxford by an interesting exhibition at the Bodleian Library of some of it a precursors. There are several very quaint specimens on view, including half a dozen Latindictionaries, dating from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. The two following centuries are represented, among others, by "A litel boke of doctrine for ioitgu gentil men," and a "Dictoonarv in Englyshe and Welshe moclie necessary to all suche Welshemen as will spedlv learne the Englyshe tongue" (1547). The lir&t English dictionaries appeared in the 17th century, and these consisted exclusively of lists of hard words. The contents of one, a "table alphabetical!" (1C04) were, says liie titlo |>n-_'c. "gathered for the benefit and help of ladies, gentlewomen or any other unskilful persons, whereby they may the more easily and better understand many hard English words which they shall hear or read in the Scriptures, sermons or elsewhere, and so be made to use the same aptly themselves." The first important attempt at a dictionary of slang is entitled "A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, in Its Several Tribes of Gypsies, Beggars, Thieves, Cheats, etc.'' (1720). The incomplete and limited efforts in lexicography . which preceded his great work emphasise the vast knowledge and indomitable character of Dr. .Johnson, and also to a less •striking extent of his successor, the American, Noah Webster. Lexicographers (like many historians) depend on the work of their predecessors for the basis of their own. Johnson's principal aid was the first "Universal Dictionary," produced by Nathaniel Bailey, a Seventh Day Baptist, who kept a boarding school in Stepney at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Johnson's work was a vast improvement upon it, and included for the first time illustrative quotations. Tt held the field unrivalled until Webster's work appeared in 1828 and registered a still further advance in the art of definition. Fresh # and up-to-date editions of Webster's dictionary have been issued since then, but the many recent English dictionaries owe their bulk very largely to the inclusion of material which might more suitably be found in an encyclopaedia. That is where the "0.E.D." is really unique, for it is in the true sense a dictionary, insomuch as it deals as was never done before with the words themselves, their origin and history, their forms and pronunciation, their meanirgs and uses, and with their "relations" fcmong other languages of the world. Voluntary Scouts. Nor can the makers of such a dictionary be content merely to hide their heads in the dust of ages. Every dictionary is necessarily out of date before St is published, since new words pour continuously into the language; but it is desirable to be alert, since quotations can often be most aptly chosen from current utterances. Take one word, j shingle, in the tonsorial sense. At a shot one wduld give it, say, four or five years of life. Actually it dates back to 1857. It is less surprising to learu that, like so .many additions to the tongue, it comes from America. And as for quotation*. "wit," which opens with one culled from Beowulf, concludes with another, no loh* worthy, from Mr. Baldwin. And the editors and assistants have always liad hundreds, of alert voluntary "scout*" o« the look out for new words and worthily (or unworthily) used old ones. They havo sent in their slips in bmli profusion that the permanent staff nf tho dictionary have had. hard work to keep abreast of them. And these interested helper* have come from all Indeed, cine extremely useful enfc fur many year* sent his from Broadmoor asylum, iff® fwcame an inmate after comjffryfog; iff a (it of persecution mania, M»orough and purposely* j