Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

by Ammon Shea

  I met her eight years ago, after she read a book I had written about obscure words and sent me a letter, saying that she reasoned that I must be interested in dictionaries, and asking if I would perhaps like to pay her a visit to look at her collection. I went down to where she lives, in an elegant loft in lower Manhattan, and although I do not remember what I was expecting, I do remember that as soon as I entered her apartment I realized that whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this.

  There are only a few moments in my life when I have been literally struck speechless. Once was last year, when I ran a red light on my bicycle and a car traveling at thirty-five miles an hour ran directly into me, throwing me sixty feet through the air. When I stood up and discovered that I’d suffered nothing worse than a few scuffs I was so happy and surprised that I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Then I began laughing.

  Another time was when I was eighteen years old, and had gone to Paris, the first time in my life I’d left North America. I was wandering around the city aimlessly and I happened into the cathedral of Notre Dame. The crowds of tourists around me were forgotten as I gazed up at its interior and tried to reason how and why such a ridiculous piece of splendor had ever come to be built. I was dumbstruck, and then after a few moments I began laughing.

  So it was as I entered Madeline’s apartment—she met me at the door, introduced herself and shook my hand, and then allowed me to walk in ahead of her. I made it through a short hallway choked with boxes and then walked into an enormous room with more dictionaries than I thought possible. Once again I was speechless, and then I laughed.

  I stood there in the center of her living room and turned slowly in a circle, initially taking in just the quantity of books and after a few minutes beginning to take in their quality as well.

  There were bookshelves, ten feet tall, on almost every wall in the room, with rolling ladders on runners. The rolling ladders looked as though they were not particularly functional, as additional piles of dictionaries, several feet tall and deep, had managed to accumulate on the floor in front of the shelves. Dictionaries lay on every possible surface—on tables, chairs, bookstands, the kitchen counter, and the floor. On the few spots of wall not taken up with dictionaries hung portraits of dictionary makers and framed letters to and from lexicographers both famous and forgotten.

  One small shelf held nothing but dozens of miniature dictionaries, some the size of postage stamps. Nearby several rows of a bookcase were filled with enormous and antiquated books, dictionaries that would obviously require two hands and a strong back to read. A whole wall on one side of the room held dictionaries and other books on slang. Filing cabinets were stuffed with neatly arranged folders full of advertisements for dictionaries, reviews of dictionaries, and papers about dictionaries.

  Madeline stood there and enjoyed my reaction for a few minutes more, and then gave me a tour of the books. And even though we never left the confines of this twenty-by-thirty-foot room it was still in its own way an exhausting tour. Over the next five hours we walked from the fifteenth century to the present, from Australia to New York, and from Samuel Johnson to Walt Frazier Jr. (the former New York Knicks basketball player and author of Word Jam: A Guide to Amazing Vocabulary).

  It was immediately apparent that she knew where every one of the twenty thousand books in the apartment was. Furthermore, she could offer a witty and entertaining lecture on who had worked on any given book and what its lexicographical significance was and suggest other books that may have been influenced by it, all while balancing herself precariously on a ladder and tugging the book out from the shelves.

  Madeline herself is somewhat diminutive and has a bushel of crinkly hair and perpetually twinkling eyes that suggest she is aware that she owns a collection that is miraculous to some small portion of the population, but not terribly exciting to the rest.

  I had been collecting dictionaries in a somewhat desultory fashion prior to meeting her, picking up whatever odd volumes I found in thrift shops or the secondhand bookstores I frequented. This changed as soon as I met Madeline, and one of the first things I learned from her was that it was dangerous to go by to see her with money in my pocket. I’d tell myself that I was just going to stop in to say hello and have a quick visit, and that under no circumstances would I buy any more dictionaries. Then Madeline would show me some interesting book she’d lately come across, and casually mention that now she had this copy she might be able to sell me her old copy, and her price would always be so reasonable, and she always managed to make the books sound so fascinating, that I would inevitably wind up walking out of her apartment hours later, arms laden with several bags of books and my wallet considerably lighter.

  No matter what sum of money I spent, I always left there with the firm impression that I’d got a bargain. The amount of information about dictionaries I’ve learned from Madeline is incalculable. Whenever I go to see her I make a list of all the things I want to ask her about beforehand, but we never make it to the end of that list. She has the habit of answering a question about one dictionary by pulling out a dozen others, and somehow makes the answers to my initial questions so entertaining that I forget what my other questions are.

  I suppose that I would have continued to collect dictionaries even if I had not met Madeline. I would have shopped for the odd item here and there in bookstores, but they don’t often get good dictionaries. And I’m sure that from time to time I would buy some overpriced book sight unseen on the Internet from a book-seller with whom I would have no contact at all, which is really not a satisfying way to shop for books.

  However, I don’t think I would have gotten ensnared in quite the same way had I not met Madeline. I didn’t merely learn from her about words and their catalogers; I learned as well about the ineffable joy that can be had in pursuing the absurd. And there is something truly marvelous about such a fervid pursuit of something as absurd as collecting twenty thousand copies of what is essentially the same type of book, and it is endlessly inviting to see that someone who is so fascinating is engaged in it.

  It is a certainty to me that without Madeline’s influence and example I never would have been moved to read the OED from cover to cover. So I will say that I blame her for the position that I now find myself in, but what I mean by blame is that I credit her for helping me find happiness in the pages of one gigantic book.

  Dapocaginous (adj.) Having a narrow heart.

  A somewhat literary insult rather than a medical term, dapocaginous goes nicely with pusillanimous (which comes from the Latin words for “narrow” and “soul”).

  Debag (v.) To strip the pants from a person, either as a punishment or as a joke.

  Oh, what a merry time it used to be, back in the days when it was still considered fun and games to rip the trousers from a person as a practical joke. Unfortunately, debag is a fairly recent word (the citations are all from the early- to mid-twentieth century) and it still appears to be a practice people engage in. also see: sansculottic

  Deipnosophist (n.) A person who is learned in the art of dining.

  Although I prefer the definition found in Webster’s Third (“a

  person skilled in table talk”), the OED offers the bonus of another

  word, which most dictionaries do not have: deipnophobia

  (fear of dinner parties).

  also see: bedinner, colloquialist, eutrapely

  Desiderium (n.) A yearning, specifically for a thing one once had, but has no more.

  Desiderium is the appropriate word for lost youth or innocence, for the great love of your life (who perished from consumption), or for the utopian community that you belonged to

  that was somehow destroyed by forces of evil. It is not the

  word for your lost wallet.

  also see: remord

  Deteriorism (n.) The attitude that things will usually get worse.

  The pessimist’s nostalgia, deteriorism goes far beyond simply

  whining that things use
d to be better and takes the bold

  stance that the world is actively and energetically going to hell

  in a handbasket.

  also see: pejorist

  Dilapidator (n.) A person who neglects a building and allows it to deteriorate.

  The original meaning of dilapidate (from the Latin dilapidare, to squander) was to allow a building to fall into a state of disrepair. In New York dilapidators are simply known as landlords. also see: grimthorpe

  Dis- (prefix)

  To get from disability to disyoke in the OED takes 163 pages. Despite moments of mind-numbing tedium as one slogs through this distended corridor of entries, dis- is one of the most enjoyable prefixes in the alphabet. These pages have many words worth knowing, but I do not want to force too much of any one prefix down the throat of a reader. Here are just a few selections:

  Disasinate—to deprive of stupidity.

  Discalceate—to take one’s shoes off.

  Disconfide—the opposite of confide.

  Discountenancer—one who discourages with cold looks.

  Disfavourite—a person who is the opposite of a favorite.

  Dispester—to get rid of a nuisance.

  Dissight—an unpleasant sight, an eyesore.

  Dissociety—mutual dislike.

  Dulcarnon (n.) A person in a dilemma.

  The quotation the OED provides for dulcarnon is from Richard Stanyhurst’s “A Treatise Contayning a Playne and Perfect Description of Irelande,” published in 1577, which is a stern and eloquent account of some poor waverer’s dilemma between choosing infidelity and the flames of hell on one hand or Christianity and the joys of heaven on the other. I myself will think of the word when choosing between such things as one lump of sugar or two, and imagine Stanyhurst rolling over in his grave.

  Dyspathy (n.) The antithesis of sympathy.

  I suppose that antipathy, a common enough word, fulfills much the same role, but I like the idea of a word whose sole meaning is “the opposite of sympathy.”

  E

  THERE HAS NOT BEEN A GREAT DICTIONARY written by a lexicographer working by himself since the early nineteenth century. It is just far too much work. The early dictionaries in English were frequently created by a single author, but they were small works, and not what we think of today as dictionaries. Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, is generally regarded as the first English dictionary. It was an impressive feat in many respects, but it contained fewer than 2,500 entries, the defining of which would not be a lifetime’s work. This and the other dictionaries of the seventeenth century were mostly attempts to catalog and define “difficult words”; little or no attention was given to the nuts and bolts of the language or to such concerns as etymology and pronunciation.

  For most of the seventeenth century dictionaries continued to be compiled by individuals, frequently at the behest of booksellers (who at that time acted much as publishers do today). Lexicographers cheerfully and blatantly stole from their predecessors, which I imagine relieved some of the drudgery and hard work of writing a dictionary. In 1658, Edward Phillips had the gall not only to plagiarize a great deal of Thomas Blount’s dictionary of 1656, but to then accuse the man he had stolen from of inaccuracy and poor scholarship.

  Samuel Johnson famously wrote his dictionary of 1755 by himself. Noah Webster worked largely unaided, on both his small compendious dictionary of 1806 and his much more impressive two-volume work of 1828. Charles Richardson likewise was the sole author of his two-volume work published in 1836 and 1837. Each of these dictionaries was innovative and singular in some way, and very different from the others, but they all have one element strongly in common: each is indelibly stamped with the personality of the man who wrote it.

  Johnson’s dictionary is probably as famous for the wit and bite of a number of the definitions as it is for its remarkable scholarship. Generations of individuals who would never think to look at his dictionary nonetheless know that he defined oats as a grain which “in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.”

  Webster was passionate about creating a separate American dictionary, with spellings and definitions of words that would be distinguished from those of British lexicographers. His 1828 dictionary is also so definitely marked by his religious beliefs that a facsimile reprint of it is quite popular today with some Christian groups, who approve of his biblically tinged definitions of such words as marriage, sin, and husband.

  Richardson’s dictionary was . . . well, one cannot quite call it famous; in fact, it is almost completely unknown outside of lexicographic circles. But within these circles it is quite well known, in large part because of his decision to eschew definitions completely and instead to illustrate the meanings of words through literary quotations, which proved to be a significant influence on the OED. Each of these three works is eminently recognizable as the creation of its author.

  In contrast, the OED is not the creation of any one individual. There have been a number of editors, and it is still very much a work in progress, so there will doubtless be future editors who will in turn leave their own personal imprint upon it. The original edition had four editors: James Murray as the editor in chief, Henry Bradley, C. T. Onions, and W. A. Craigie. Robert Burchfield was the editor for the four-volume supplement in the years between 1957 and 1986, and the current chief editor is John Simpson. One could also count Herbert Coleridge, who was editor from 1859 to 1861, when he fell ill with tuberculosis and died. Although Coleridge did not preside over any of the published work, he still had a marked influence on it.

  But even though a number of people influenced the OED, the single most apparent presence is certainly that of James Murray. Though the dictionary is not his creation alone, it has his personality writ large, both in the sections that he personally defined as well as those that he shaped merely through his suggestions. I may be confused sometimes about which of the other editors provided a definition or comment, but I feel I can always identify when it was Murray. His voice, always erudite, frequently cranky, and sometimes both, is almost immediately recognizable.

  For instance, I know that Murray edited P, but even if I didn’t, I think I could have guessed it. Under the entry for pn- is one of the rare editorial notes to appear in the OED. It contains Murray’s reasons for why the p at the beginning of this prefix should be pronounced (chiefly, because all the other Europeans do so) and ends in a gently scolding tone: “the reduction of pneo- to neo-, pneu- to new-, and pnyx to nix, is a loss to etymology and intelligibility, and a weakening of the resources of the language.”

  Murray was on occasion wonderfully cantankerous, and not above nursing a grudge when he felt that either he or his dictionary had been slighted. In Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary, her marvelous book about the editing of the OED, Lynda Mugglestone recounts how Murray responded to the intemperate criticism of Benjamin Jowett, the head of Oxford University Press, who remonstrated Murray for what he perceived as an incorrect use of the word due. Murray said nothing at the time, but fourteen years later, when writing the entry for due, he inserted an example of Jowett using this word in the exact same way that he had previously criticized.

  Whenever I feel that I am on a fool’s errand, and that my year might be spent in some more productive activity than this, I think of Murray, and the thirty-six years that he devoted to creating this dictionary. And then I realize that the reading I am engaged in is a privilege, not a task, and even if the dictionary were doubled in size I would want to read it still.

  -ee (suffix) One who is the recipient or beneficiary of a specific action or thing.

  With -ee attaching itself to so many interesting words, it seems rather a shame that the only ones still in common use today are pedestrian examples such as employee, escapee, and divorcée . In the interest of expanding your descriptive range I have included the following examples:

  Affrontee—a person who has been affro
nted.

  Beatee—a person who has been beaten, as opposed to beater.

  Borrowee—the person from whom a thing is borrowed.

  Boree—one who is bored.

  Complainee—a person who is complained about.

  Discontentee—one who is discontent.

  Flingee—a person at whom something is flung.

  Gazee—a person who is stared at.

  Laughee—someone who is laughed at.

  Objectee—either a person who is objected against or a person who objects.

  Sornee—one who has been sponged upon by others for free food or lodging.

  Elozable (adj.) Readily influenced by flattery.

  Given that just about everyone is capable of being flattered to some extent, I think this word should be reserved for those who are particularly amenable to it, such as writers of books about obscure words. also see: expalpate

  Elucubration (n.) Studying or writing by candlelight.

  From the Latin elucubrare (to compose by candlelight), elucubration is the word to describe staying up late while engaged in putatively productive endeavors, as opposed to just staying up late and watching TV.

  Elumbated (adj.) “Weakened in the loins.” (OED)

  A very delicate treatment of a possibly salacious word. The OED does not seem to specify what the cause of the weakening is, so use this word with care.

  Embusque (n.) A person who avoids military service, especially through securing a job in government or the civil service.

  I presume that ever since there has been a military there have been people eager to avoid serving in it. While being an embusque (which with a touch of irony comes from the French word embusquer, to ambush) may not be the most honorable way of going about it, it certainly is more prudent than some others, such as shooting off a toe.