Lexicography And The Oed

An obsessive word lover's account of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary, hailed as "the Super Size Me of lexicography." "I'm reading the OED so you don't have to," says Ammon Shea on his slightly masochistic journey to scale the word lover's Mount Everest: the Oxford English Dictionary. In 26 chapters filled with sharp wit, sheer delight, and a documentarian's keen eye, Shea shares his year inside the OED, delivering a hair-pulling, eye-crossing account of reading every word.

The authors of this book draw on previously unpublished archive material to explore the pioneering endeavours of the scholars who conceived the Oxford English Dictionary and, with the assistance of an army of correspondents, brought it into being after half a century of Herculean labour. Its first publication in 1928 as the twelve-volume A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles was an important cultural event. In lexicographical and linguistic terms it was a revolution. Deliberately conceived as a new departure in English lexicography, the dictionary constituted an emphatic return to first principles, in terms of the evidence by which the record of the language was constructed and in the nature of the work itself. The prescriptive policy of earlier dictionaries was replaced by empirical description, while new scientific principles of philology were deployed to advance the understanding of the meaning and function of language. Lexicography and the OED provides new perspectives on the principles of the work and on the people, readers as well as editors, who created it. It includes chapters on its early history; the sources that were read for it; the nature of Englishness and the concept of the 'alien'; questions of inclusiveness and correctness; the standards of usage which the dictionary came to record; the treatment of early English and of science; the representation of pronunciation; the fundamental issues of word-formation; and the at times intractable problems of meaning. The book also sets the dictionary in the context of international lexicography, and examines how it was received by scholars and by the public. This is the most wide-ranging account yet published of the creation of one of the great canonical works of the twentieth century.

Lexicography and the OED: Pioneers in the Untrodden Forest sets out to explore the pioneering endeavours in both lexicography and lexicology which led to the making of the first English dictionary published by Oxford. Deliberately conceived as a new departure in English lexicography, the first OED, as James Murray stressed, was to be founded on an unequivocal return to first principles, both in the nature of its construction and in the evidence amassed for its compilation. It also produced, as this book shows, a host of problems: on the nature of Englishness, correctness, and general standards of language use, as well as in aspects of pronunciation, semantics, and syntax. Often making use of previously unpublished archive material, this collection of twelve essays provides both a range of perspectives from which the dictionary can be approached, and also explores the particular problems posed by the attempt to realize the pioneering acts of lexicography integral to the making of the dictionary.

The Oxford English Dictionary is the internationally recognized authority on the evolution of the English language from 1150 to the present day. The Dictionary defines over 500,000 words, making it an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, pronunciation, and history of the English language. This new upgrade version of The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM offers unparalleled access to the world's most important reference work for the English language. The text of this version has been augmented with the inclusion of the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series (Volumes 1-3), published in 1993 and 1997, the Bibliography to the Second Edition, and other ancillary material. System requirements: PC with minimum 200 MHz Pentium-class processor; 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended); 16-speed CD-ROM drive (32-speed recommended); Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 200, or XP (Local administrator rights are required to install and open the OED for the first time on a PC running Windows NT 4 and to install and run the OED on Windows 2000 and XP); 1.1 GB hard disk space to run the OED from the CD-ROM and 1.7 GB to install the CD-ROM to the hard disk: SVGA monitor: 800 x 600 pixels: 16-bit (64k, high color) setting recommended. Please note: for the upgrade, installation requires the use of the OED CD-ROM v2.0.

This volume provides concise, authoritative accounts of the approaches and methodologies of modern lexicography and of the aims and qualities of its end products. Leading scholars and professional lexicographers, from all over the world and representing all the main traditions andperspectives, assess the state of the art in every aspect of research and practice. The book is divided into four parts, reflecting the main types of lexicography. Part I looks at synchronic dictionaries - those for the general public, monolingual dictionaries for second-language learners, andbilingual dictionaries. Part II and III are devoted to the distinctive methodologies and concerns of the historical dictionaries and specialist dictionaries respectively, while chapters in Part IV examine specific topics such as description and prescription; the representation of pronunciation; andthe practicalities of dictionary production. The book ends with a chronology of the major events in the history of lexicography. It will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and practitioners in the field.

This book tells the history of the Oxford English Dictionary from its beginnings in the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. The author, uniquely among historians of the OED, is also a practising lexicographer with nearly thirty years' experience of working on the Dictionary. He has drawn on a wide range of sources-including previously unexamined archival material and eyewitness testimony-to create a detailed history of the project. The book explores the cultural background from which the idea of a comprehensive historical dictionary of English emerged, the lengthy struggles to bring this concept to fruition, and the development of the book from the appearance of the first printed fascicle in 1884 to the launching of the Dictionary as an online database in 2000 and beyond. It also examines the evolution of the lexicographers' working methods, and provides much information about the people-many of them remarkable individuals-who have contributed to the project over the last century and a half.

These substantial volumes present the fullest account yet published of the lexicography of English from its origins in medieval glosses, through its rapid development in the eighteenth century, to a fully-established high-tech industry that is as reliant as ever on learning and scholarship. The history covers dictionaries of English and its national varieties, including American English, with numerous references to developments in Europe and elsewhere which have influenced the course of English lexicography. Part one of Volume I explores the early development of glosses and bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and examines their influence on lexicographical methods and ideas. Part two presents a systematic history of monolingual dictionaries of English and includes extensive chapters on Johnson, Webster and his successors in the USA, and the OED. It also contains descriptions of the development of dictionaries of national and regional varieties, and of Old and Middle English, and concludes with an account of the computerization of the OED. The specialized dictionaries described in Volume II include dictionaries of science, dialects, synonyms, etymology, pronunciation, slang and cant, quotations, phraseology, and personal and place names. This volume also includes an account of the inception and development of dictionaries developed for particular users, especially foreign learners of English. The Oxford History of English Lexicography unites scholarship with readability. It provides a unique and accessible reference for scholars and professional lexicographers and offers a series of fascinating encounters with the men and women involved over the centuries in the making of works of profound national and linguistic importance.

Examines the hidden history through which the Oxford English Dictionary came into being in a study that traces the personal battles involved in chronicling an ever-changing language.