Lexicographical Essays from the OED

The Oxford English Dictionary is the grand-daddy of lexicographical achievements, describing how words in the English language have been used over time by means of quotations from publications.  In addition to owning print copies of the first and second editions, we are fortunate to have a campus-wide subscription to this wonderful resource.  In the past year, the OED Online has made a number of improvements to the online version of their indispensable publication, which now includes timelines for each word and links to the Historical Thesaurus of the OED, as well as more specialized dictionaries for non-modern meanings of words.

In addition to the content of the dictionary, the OED website includes many other features that may be of interest to the lexicographically curious reader.  In particular, note the short but fascinating essays by the editors of the Dictionary, for example John Ayto on 20th century English or David Crystal on the influence of the King James Bible on our language or Robert McCrum on entries using P. G. Wodehouse's works.

There is even a series of YouTube videos on a variety of topics related to the Dictionary.  Ever wonder how entries are researched?  Check it out on YouTube!

To keep up with what is new about this ever-changing publication, you can follow the OED Online on Twitter.

Lexicography and the Law

My language as a youth was often governed by the Good Book- that is The Dictionary.  If I was curious about the meaning of a particular word, or certainly about the spelling of that word, the voice, which in my memory becomes disembodied like one from a Charlie Brown cartoon, implores me to "look it up!"  And certainly, if the word in question was NOT in the dictionary, it was, by its very lack of a definition, not a word.  Next case, please.

This article by Adam Liptak from the New York Times describes the growing use of dictionaries by justices in federal courts.

An example given is Chief Justice Roberts looking up the meaning of the word "of" in five different dictionaries (and finding out that it means pretty much what you would think it means.)

“I think that it’s probably wrong, in almost all situations, to use a dictionary in the courtroom,” said Jesse Sheidlower , the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Secret Life of Punctuation

Keith Huston's blog Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation has been interesting to follow.  This week, his post is part 1 of 2 on the ampersand.  In it, we get some background on Cicero, whose scribe Tiro came up with a Roman form of shorthand in which he introduced the Tironean "et", which would certainly be the standard abbreviation for and. 

Or would it?

Looking forward to part 2!

Featured New Book: J.R.R. Tolkien's Double Worlds and Creative Process: Language and Life

Arne Zettersten's J.R.R. Tolkien's Double Worlds and Creative Process: Language and Life is the author's description of the overlap of the academic and creative work of J.R.R. Tolkien.  Tolkien was, most famously, the author of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as other justly famous works of fantasy.  However, he was also a brilliant linguist and philologist and professor of English language and literature at Oxford, specializing in Anglo-Saxon, Old English and other aspects of the history of our language.  He also worked on the Oxford English Dictionary, (as also discussed in a brief essay by Peter Gilliver, an associate editor of the OED.)

In this book, Zettersten, who worked with Tolkien in the latter part of the great man's academic career, looks at how his academic work informed his creative work.

If you are interested in Tolkien, the creative mind and process, or the history of our language, check out this book.