OED #2: A Brief History of English Dictionaries

When William Shakespeare was writing his plays, there was no such thing as an English dictionary, writes Simon Winchester in The Professor and the Madman:

“It (English language) was like the air – it was taken for granted.”

 

In 1604, Robert Cawdrey created a 120 page listing of 2,500 words and their meanings “for the benefit of Ladies, gentlewomen or any other unskilled persons”. The idea wasn’t to list all words; it was only to list the “hard words” – uncommon words, and other “pretentious and flowery inventions”.

 

Future attempts in the 17^th century increased the word count significantly – all the way to 38,000 words. But even then, two points were ignored: (1) Nobody tried to list all the words, including the easy ones, and (2) There were no clear rules on how/who decided what was a “valid” word.

 

A key driver to creating a dictionary that contained all words was Britain’s growing dominance of the world. That meant its language would have be needed in more and more places, including places whose natives didn’t know any English. From this point onwards, English dictionaries tried to include more and more words, including the day-to-day words.

 

But how does one identify all the words in a language? You could record all the words you hear, but that’s impractical. Besides, how would you decide when to stop? Samuel Johnson declared that the English language had “probably reached its peak with the writings of Shakespeare, Bacon, and Edmund Spenser, and so there was probably precious little need to go further back than their lifetimes”. Hence, books published in their lifetime would be the starting point. And the last books by recently dead authors would mark the end point. Hence, Johnson’s dictionary was based on about 150 years of writings. Johnson added a personal touch and let his personality “invade the pages” via the meanings of words:

“To some who wanted to book to be supremely authoritative, it was irritatingly unprofessional.”

 

The next set of lexicographers felt a dictionary should be “an inventory of the language”, not a guide to proper usage since the latter just led to controversy and arguments. The no-supreme-authority mindset also led to the decision that the next attempt should be the “combined action of many”, including “unpaid amateurs”. Winchester wryly summarizes the method to create the next dictionary, the one that would be called the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) as:

“The English, who had raised eccentricity and poor organization to a high art, and placed the scatterbrain on a pedestal, loathed such Middle European things as rules, conventions, and dictatorships. They abhorred the idea of diktats – about the language, for Heaven’s sake – emanating from some secretive body of unaccountable immortals.”

This decision - to crowdsource the job to anybody willing to help – is what would permit the involvement of Dr W.C. Minor, the “madman” from the previous blog.