§ 6. The Oxford English Dictionary
The work described on its title-page as A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, and long known familiarly as N.E.D. or Murray’s Dictionary, but now generally as the Oxford Dictionary, has a continuous history of more than half a century. It was in 1857 that Dean Trench (afterwards Archbishop Trench) laid the foundation of the work by calling the attention of the Philological Society to the inadequacy of all existing English Dictionaries. He pointed out that thousands of words which had become obsolete, but remained in the national literature, had either escaped the diligence of lexicographers or had been excluded by the limitations of their plan; and in especial that no dictionary gave any account of the history of words and their senses; in none was it ascertained when a word was first used, when (if obsolete) it had last been used, and how its senses had been developed.
The members of the Philological Society threw themselves eagerly into the plan proposed for supplying these deficiencies, and an army of volunteers set about the systematic examination of the whole body of English literature. At length a dictionary was projected (in place of the supplement first suggested, which it was realized would be much larger than the works it was designed to supplement), and Mr. Herbert Coleridge was appointed editor. Fresh volunteers were enlisted, and the work made progress. But it could hardly have taken shape without the tireless industry and indomitable courage of the next editor, Dr. Furnivall, who saw, but did not shrink from, the immense preparatory labours yet to be faced. Furnivall realized that an English Dictionary could not be made until the roots of the language could be examined in the mass of our early literature, which was then hardly known; and to provide this essential he founded in 1864 the Early English Text Society—the long list of whose publications, still growing, may be read in the Clarendon Press Catalogue.
But even the enthusiasm of a Furnivall did not avail to prevent a growing sense of despondency, when the work seemed to lengthen out indefinitely with no promise of performance. No private publisher could be found to undertake a work so vast. It was decided to invite the co-operation of the Clarendon Press. The Philological Society and Dr. James Murray, who had thrown himself into the work with an energy equal to Furnivall’s own, and was by acclamation designated as editor, entered into negotiations with the Delegates of the Press, and an agreement was signed.
It is fortunate that the magnitude of human undertakings is seldom perceived by those who engage upon them. Coleridge had intimated that it would be time to begin the Dictionary when a hundred thousand quotations had been pigeon-holed. The efforts of Furnivall and Murray brought the total to three and a half million quotations, selected by thirteen hundred readers from the works of five thousand authors. The work of accumulation has gone on for forty years since, and to-day the Dictionary contains about one and three-quarter million printed quotations, selected from a greatly larger number. Dr. Murray himself agreed with the Delegates for a work of between 6,000 and 7,000 pages. The total will exceed 15,000. He expected to complete the book in ten years with a small staff. To-day, thirty-five years after printing began, the work, to which Murray himself contributed more than 7,000 pages, is being carried on by three editors with twelve assistants; and the end is not yet.
It is impossible to value too highly the services of voluntary helpers from the beginning to the present day. The completeness and accuracy of the work, which is probably without a rival in any country or in any age, could not have been secured except by editors of the greatest learning and ability and by the training of a lifetime; but these qualities would not have availed if the work had not been founded upon inductive investigations of a range never before attempted. For the wealth of the materials made available our gratitude is due to readers not only in the United Kingdom but in all parts of the world, and notably in the United States of America, where the Dictionary is regarded with affectionate admiration as the common achievement of the English-speaking people.
Valuable, however, as the work of these voluntary helpers has been, an even larger debt of gratitude is due to the faithful labours of the editorial staff of assistants, some of whom can trace back their term of service to the earliest years of the undertaking. To their acumen, vigilance, and zeal have been and are due in large measure the completeness of the evidence and the correctness of detail in the presentation of words and their meanings.
Dr. Murray with his staff moved to Oxford in 1885, and there the work has been continuously carried on, partly in the Scriptorium attached to Dr. Murray’s house, partly (and in recent years wholly) in the Old Ashmolean Building, next door to the old Sheldonian Press and within a stone’s throw of the Bodleian. Here, as a section of the alphabet comes to be treated, the material is sifted, extracts from it are put in order, fresh investigations, often laborious, are undertaken to settle etymologies and doubtful points in the history of a word; copy is prepared for the printer, and references are checked. The complete preparation of the material involves researches of the most varied nature, some of which lead the editors even beyond the confines of our own language to novel and important discoveries.
The scope of the Dictionary, in the form which it finally assumed, is thus stated in the preface to Volume I:—‘The aim of this dictionary is to furnish an adequate account of the meaning, origin, and history of English words now in general use, or known to have been in use at any time during the last seven hundred years. It endeavours (1) to show, with regard to each individual word, when, how, in what shape, and with what signification, it became English; what development of form and meaning it has since received; which of its uses have, in the course of time, become obsolete, and which still survive; what new uses have since arisen, by what processes, and when: (2) to illustrate these facts by a series of quotations ranging from the first known occurrence of the word to the latest, or down to the present day; the word being thus made to exhibit its own history and meaning: and (3) to treat the etymology of each word strictly on the basis of historical fact, and in accordance with the methods and results of modern philological science.’
