GATEWAY OF THE OLD ASHMOLEAN
As the history of many English words begins with the Anglo-Saxon period, and the ‘first known occurrence’ may be as early as the seventh century, the period actually covered by hundreds of the articles in the Dictionary is one of ten, eleven, or twelve centuries.
The extent to which the aim of the Dictionary has been accomplished is not yet so widely known as it ought to be. Many discussions as to the origin, history, and meaning of words are carried on in newspapers and periodicals which could be decided at once by a reference to the Dictionary. Inquirers spend much of their own and others’ time, and in the end write to one of the editors, in quest of information which has for years been available in the published volumes. Nor is it solely the student of language who can profit by the use of the Dictionary, although in this respect it is of unique value both for English and Continental philologists. Every scholar and scientist is likely to find in it some fresh light upon his own subject, for many special points in the history and terminology of the various sciences have for the first time been elucidated in its pages.
The reputation, however, of the Dictionary is now so widely spread that it would be superfluous to call witnesses to its unique qualities and its profound usefulness. In the legislature and in the law courts, as well as in the library and the market place, its ruling on the meanings and use of words is accepted as final. Nor is the range of the work limited in this respect to the usage of the United Kingdom; it embraces all forms of the language sanctioned as standard by literary use, wherever English is spoken and written.
For these and other reasons no proper comparison can be made with any other English dictionary; but the magnitude of the result may none the less be gauged by means of these. Taking one of the ten volumes as a basis of comparison, the seventh, comprising words beginning with O and P, has nearly 49,000 words (of which over 5,000 are obsolete and nearly 2,000 are naturalized aliens). No other English dictionary has more than 27,000 words beginning with O and P. When comparison is made of the number of illustrative quotations, the difference is overwhelming; Vol. VII has 175,000 quotations, and no other dictionary has much more than 20,000 for the same sections of the alphabet.
If it is thought that, great as the work is, it has taken an inordinate time to produce, comfort may be taken from the fate of comparable enterprises abroad. The great Deutsches Wörterbuch started by the brothers Grimm in 1838 began to be printed as long ago as 1851, and thus had a start of over thirty years; but though it is only some two-thirds of the scale of the Oxford book, there still after sixty-seven years remains about a sixth to do. The Dutch Woordenboek is less advanced, and the dictionary of the Swedish Academy has not passed the letter D.
The state of the work to-day is that of the ten volumes nine are published, and of the tenth (Ti-Z) substantial parts are complete, namely Ti-Ty, and V, X Y Z, and the first sections of U and W. The end, however, is not so near as might be thought; U is a large section, and W is in many respects the most difficult letter in the alphabet, consisting as it does almost entirely of words of Teutonic origin, and therefore of obscure etymology and complicated history. A lexicographer makes light work of parallelepiped and supralapsarian; it is when he comes to words like wealth and work, war and waste, wild and wilful, that his powers of discovery and of discrimination are seriously taxed.
Sir James Murray (he was knighted in 1908) died 26 July 1915. His ambition to see the completion of the work on his eightieth birthday in 1917 was not fulfilled, and even if he had lived to devote to it his amazing powers of application, could not have been fulfilled. He lived, however, to see the end of his life-work in sight, and more than that of any other man his name will be associated with the long and efficient working of the great engine of research. The volumes produced by him have characteristic excellences which cannot be exactly matched, though they may be rivalled by merits of another kind.
The work is now carried on by three editors, working independently on different sections of the alphabet. Dr. Henry Bradley, whose period of work on the Dictionary now rivals Murray’s in point of time, is by common consent the greatest of living English philologists. He has been an editor since 1888. Professor W. A. Craigie, who has been an editor since 1901, and Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon since 1916, brings to the work of the Dictionary a rare combination of qualifications. He is especially eminent as a Scandinavian scholar. Mr. C. T. Onions, appointed an editor in 1913, has been on the staff since 1895. He is also known to scholars as the author of the Oxford Shakespeare Glossary and for his editorial part in Shakespeare’s England.