The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (Paperback)

I think what makes book better is that Winchester has more meat to chew on. The making of the OED was not a simple affair and the whole thing seems to have very nearly met its end on more than one occasion. The book reads like a fantastic novel, complete with good guys and evil villains. And along the way you get to learn a good deal about a) the English language, b) lexicography (Dictionary study) and c) the English society that produced such a monumental (in all meanings of the word) work.

I felt a little cheated towards the end when the last 70 odd years of the OED are wrapped up in a few pages. I would have found it fascinating to learn more how the work of gathering up new words for the planned 2007 edition has changed since the original plan in the 1860s. And Winchester still tends to wander just a bit too much for my taste.

All in all a good solid read that will entertain and edify at the same time.

The present book was written in approximately 2003, and is a bit similar but a vast improvement over the earlier book "The Professor and The Madman" also written by Simon Winchester but published in 1998 - my opinion. So Winchester now has two books on the subject of the writing of Oxford English Dictionary. But this newer book is much better than the older book. The two books approach the OED with different emphasis.

The first book 'Professor and the Madman' is somewhat like the author getting into the saga of the OED and suddenly making a left turn up the winding and unpredictable path of the life of Dr. William Minor, a mental patient that helped work on the dictionary from his cell. The rest of the OED story falls by the wayside.

Here we return to the OED story and all of its colorful characters. The first book was written in approximately 1998. The span of time has given Simon Winchester the opportunity to present a better package of ideas and it all shows. The present book gives a very detailed and balanced description. He presents some information on the English language and more information on the earlier dictionaries. He continues the story right up to the current computerized dictionary. It is a lot better that the earlier book - that reads like a novel - but is limited in scope to mainly Dr. Minor and James Murray.

One of the prime movers of that book (the OED) was a Scotsman James Murray who started at the beginning in 1878. Prior to that date, nothing of practical value was done between 1857 and 1878. He was in essence the first editor (technically the third), and he edited the dictionary up to approximately the volume ending with the letter T - the degree of the progress of the dictionary at his death in 1915. The cast of characters also included Henry Bradley who became a co-editor, Frederick Furnivall an early and very disorganized editor before Murray, and other English luminaries such as Benjamin Jowett of Balliol College. Even Churchill, Queen Victoria, and J.R.R. Tolkien have small roles.

I bought both books by Winchester but in retrospect would have skipped the first book and just bought the newer book. The newer book has one chapter on Dr. Minor and Fitzedward Hall and other people that sent in quotations by mail - which for me is enough.

I would only give the book 4 stars. The reason is that at the end of the book ' which is short just over 250 pages, one has the feeling that large chunks of the story are missing and a proper OED story would be a 500 to 1000 page book. The book seems rushed and starts to skip things towards the end. This seems to be confirmed by the other book about Dr. Minor (the Madman) that by itself is also 250 pages.

Jack in Toronto

This is a publication still in progress. The OED now has plans for a BBC television show that hunts for words and word origins; the website edition of the OED is in constant revision and very heavily used. According to the OED, 'The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.' How did it come to have such authority in the English language?

One thing to consider about the difference between English and a language such as French is that there is no definitive central authority that has official imprimatur over linguistic matters. Unlike the French Academe (which does itself have to bow ultimately to public convention in matters of common use), English has been for most of its time a flexible, fluid language born of competing strands within the Indo-European language family - words have Germanic, Latinate, Celtic, Greek and other influences; in the more recent times, Native American, African and Asian words have crept into common use.

Winchester's book gives a look at the early days of the development of the major project, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the kind of language world in which this project would exist. How does one trace English language words from a diverse island of speakers who have expanded beyond that island to become a worldwide empire?

Winchester's prologue gives a good story of the inauguration of the first edition (then twelve volumes, described as 'twelve mighty tombstone-sized volumes') of the OED in the Goldsmith Hall, with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin presiding over a grand ceremony fit for a king on Derby Day. The then editor-in-chief William Craigie had been knighted and given an honourary degree from Oxford in recognition of his efforts; however, he had not been at the helm for the duration, for the task of coming to this point had begun over 70 years before - William Craigie had yet to be born when the OED project started.

Winchester gives a short description of the history and state of the language, including earlier attempts to produce dictionaries. 'Not one of them - not Johnson, not Webster, not Richardson - ever did the English language justice.' None came close to containing all the words in the English language. The pursuit of a thorough dictionary began as a pursuit 'both learned and leisured'. Progress was slow, and sometimes looked as though the whole process might falter - indeed, in the first twenty years, a mere 40 pages were in type, although hundreds of thousands of words had been collected and organised in note card fashion, stored in pigeon-holes. There were issues early that threatened the comprehensive nature of the dictionary project - Herbert Coleridge, the first editor, had moral objection to certain words being included. These were not the typical curse words, but rather words like 'devilship'. Coleridge died young, however, 'on the quintessentially English date of 23 April - both the Feast of St. George and the birthday of Shakespeare'. Coleridge's estimate of 100,000 quotations was a grand underestimate, but he did set the project on a trajectory from which it would eventually succeed.

Perhaps the most interesting characters part of this tale are Fitzedward Hall, a hermit who was obsessed with the OED project, and William Chester Minor, a murderer-lunatic whose involvement in the project was nothing short of remarkable. One can imagine that were Hall alive today, he would be obsessively glued to a computer screen tracking down words and word origins and typing up little emails to submit to the OED editorial team. Minor's way of reading, described here by Winchester, reminds me in many ways of the method by which internet reviewers sometimes size up books in preparation for writing reviews, with prodigious regularity.

This is a wonderful text, fascinating in the many details and broad in scope of the project that in many ways encompassed the whole of the English language.