THE "SHORTER OXFORD"

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 19, 22 July 1933, Page 18

THE "SHORTER OXFORD"

3 EDITIONS IN 3 MONTHS

"BLURB" AND "LIP-STICK"

(By "Ajax.")

Jhe Shorter Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles. Prepared by William Little, H. W. Fowler, and J. Coulson. Eovised and edited by C. T. Onions. 10J x 7J; in two . volumes. Vol. I, A-M, xxi + 1306 pp; vol. 11, N-Z, viii + 1307-2475 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press. London: Milford. 63s the two volumes.

[3rd Notice.]

I was glad to learn from ""Mr. W. Glaisher's January circular that "the most important book of the now p~ul> Kshing season is The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary to be published early in February by the Oxford Press." It was fflso welcome to learn from the same source three months later that, despite the price of £3 3s, with no exchange and other extras to bring it up to £4 10s as in this country, a third edition nvas ready a lew days before the end of April.

From tho April number of the "Periodical," which is the organ of the Oxford University Press, I loarnt that the book was having a good Press. Here arc four of tho eight opinions quoted:—

"The Times": "A real abridgement of the great original. ... No dictionary of like size and price does these things." "Manchester Guardian": "The very best and most scholarly English dictionary of its size." "Spectator": "A fine selection from the most interesting book in the world." "Birmingham Post": "The first impression made is the extraordinary value for money . . . the only possible substitute for the great Dictionary.."

I was the more pleased to get these opinions because somehow or other very few even of the reviews in the papers that I usually see came my way. Of those that I did sco Mr. Basil de Selincourt's in the "Observer" of April 2 and Sir John Squire's in the May "London Mercury" pleased mo the most because they both descended to details and did not shrink from the personal touch. Mr. do Selincourt I found particularly pleasing when ho was most unpardonably unreasonable.

Let. me acknowledge, he writes, that I have a faint and fruitless grievance against these two new splendid volumes established on my shelves. In the first place, though they are only half the height of Johnson's first edition, they yet require the lowest position in my small case, and I must stoop to the ground whenever a new or an old word engages my curiosity. . # • ♦ '"-

Now mark how a plain, tale of far greater suffering endured with, unmurmuring Christian fortitude shall put Mr. Selincourt down. The best of my folio shelves will just swallow the five volumes of "Poli Synopsis Criticorum" and the two of Malachy Postlethwayt's translation of M. Savary's "Universal Dictionary of Trado and Commerce," at 17 , inches, but my Johnson (4th edition, p1784), at 171 inches, is beyond its capacity. Johnson is accordingly banished to a lofty perch only approachable by a ladder, up and down which a single heavy folio is not easily conveyed and two would bo impossible. Banishment is the portion of the "Shorter Oxford" also. There is no room for it either in the ease where the rest of the Oxford family from, the 10-volume giant to the easily pocketable baby are housed, or beside Sir Paul Harvey 's '' Companion to English Literature" and the "D.N.8." The "Shorter Oxford" is therefore banished to another room, and if anything more than the example of the Babbi Ben Ezra was needed to keep the distressed owner's courage- screwed to the sticking-place, ho has found it in tho "faint and fruitless" rebellion of Mr. Selincourt against a relatively trivial misfortune.

In his editorial notes on the "Shorter Oxford" in the May number of the "London Mercury" Sir John Squiro springs two curious surprises on his readers.

Particularly in the earlier letters of the alphabet, he says, the "Shorter Dictionary" has the advantage of the "New English" in being able to be more xip to date in regard to modern uses of words and slang. We are given, for example, a word now universally used among authors and publishers, "blurb," Which is said to have been introduced from America about 1024.

After completing his notes on the dictionary ani (levoting two paragraphs to another subject, Sij Jc'in Squire reverts in a three-line Post-surift to flit "Shorter Oxford ". in order to point out that

it does not (so far as we can see) contain the word "lip-stick." Yet that sounds impossible.

One can understand a man's disposition to hedge when ho announces such a discovery, but it is no mare's nest. "Lip-, stick's" first appearance in the Oxford Dictionaries was in the "Concise Oxford^' of 1929. It was doubtless not in existence when William. Little, who died in 1922, did "L" for the "Shorter Oxford," and it was missed in the revision of his draft.

But in his treatment of "blurb" Sir John Squiro has made a queer sort of compensation for this unfortunate discovery. Adopting his formula, I may say that though it "sounds impossible,"

the word "blurb" is not to bo found

in my copy of the "Shorter Oxford." i If it does not appear, -as in tho last "Concise Oxford," between "blur" and "blurt," and there is no Appendix or list of Errata, where else could it be? And obviously much more precise evidence is needed, to prove that tho dictionary has omitted a word which a high and unbiased authority says that ho has found there than to provo the omission of a word for which merely on general grounds it might have been expected to find room. If I were cross-examined on the "a priori" chance of his making such a mistake, I should of course have to admit that it was ahnost in-

finitesimal and it would be very inter

csting to know how he came to make it. To fail to see a thing is fairly easy foi

a hurried man, but to see a thing that is not there is a much more considerable feat.

It is worth adding that the "Little Oxford," like the "Concise, '> has lioth "blurb" and "lip-stick," and. that tho 1923 edition of the American Standard Dictionary has neither. These circumstances indicate how recent is the birth of both these Americanisms —I assume that "lip-stick" is American, as "blurb" certainly is—and how rapidly they have established themselves overseas. The success with which "blurb" has covered up its

tracks is also remarkable, for its derivation appears to be beyond even a plausible guess. Its meaning accord-, ing to Mr. H. W. Fowler in the "Concise Oxford" (1920) is

publisher's eulogy of book, printed on jacket or in advertisements elsewhere.

But'the "Little Oxford." (1930) gives a rather wider definition:

Publisher's commendatory advertisement of book; summary, etc., preceding magazine stories and articles.

And as in tho compilation of this wonderful little book Mr. George Ostler paid particular attention to American slang, and had tho help of Sir William Craigie and Mr. M. M. Matthews, who are at present engaged in tho United States on tjic preparation of the great •'Dictionary of American English," the fuller definition may be accepted as the better. .

In the "London Mercury" Sir John Squire makes handsome amends for yielding to tlio temptation of exaggerating tiny omissions to the prejudice of infinitely greater merits, and I cannot do better than plead his paragraph in my own defence: —

It is one of the difficulties of writing of an encyclopaedic work of this kind, that one is tenanted to discuss the little that is omitted, and to ignore the much thut is given. That the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines .for us "Siderostat." "triichman," "trouse," "rinderpest," "Peetinibranch," "aganglionic," "erassament," and "infeodation" is nothing. We aro more amused to write of some trilling and obscure word or phrase, by chance known to us, but omitted in the Dictionary. No work of reference can be complete. Small omissions are of no importance. What matters is the great mass of information that is given in these two volumes, and to that one would wish to pay a tribute of high gratitude. The book is a marvel of scholarship—and of cheap and good publishing.