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Loading... The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionaryby Simon Winchester
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. While it appears that the networks of the Web have lead to revolutionary progressions of information sharing, we must recognize the contributions of people who have been a part of endeavors without the current technologies. Winchester traces the long history of Oxford English Dictionary and the contributive efforts of volunteer readers in The Meaning of Everything. Without monetary gains, volunteers sent in their slips of illustrative uses of words to the Scriptorium. Here was a network, though inhibited by the slow pace at the time of publishing and the post, which succeeded because most involved, shared a desire to contribute. (  )audramelissa | May 4, 2009 |   This is the second book by Winchester I've read, and I like it. Perhaps because I love the OED and reference books of any stripe, even though the internet, particularly Google and Wikipedia, have made them obsolete. Like Winchester's Map that Changed the World, the underlying work is here in full force, but there is a big focus on politics and culture. Thus, you learn a great deal about lexicography, etymology, and the like, but you also get into a morass of Victorian politics. You do get the feeling, though, that the OED reflects the Victorian society it was made in. A few peeves: Winchester uses the word "muscularly" too many times. And, he bends over backwards to bemoan and bewail the fact that very few women worked on the project way back yonder. You don't need to mention it every chapter or so, shoehorning it in to remind the beautiful people just how backwards your mighty forefathers were. Except mentioning that Cursor Mundi provided the most quotations, he doesn't delve into where the readers got other quotes, like the Bible, Shakespeare, etc. I would have found that interesting as well. ( )tuckerresearch | Apr 5, 2009 | A great companion piece to The Professor and the Madman, providing a further glimpse into the history and people that brought to fruition the Oxford English Dictionary. Winchester has a way of making history vital - bringing the human dimension to the fore. This book makes one wish time was available to be a volunteer reader, providing illustrative quotations which bring to life the history and evolution of words in the English language. It is too much to ask that some day I might own a copy of the multi-volume lexicography, but even if I did, would I have time to fully relish the bounty within? (  )Griff | Jan 27, 2009 | Very detailed. See also "The Professor and the Madman" by Winchester for an interesting footnote story re: the making of the OED. ( )horacewimsey | Dec 16, 2008 | A very readable book on the story of the Oxford English Dictionary, how it came to be, and the main characters in the development of the book, including the Civil War surgeon W. C. Minor, who was a prisoner in England's Bedlam Hospital for the Criminally Insane. ( )GeekGoddess | Nov 6, 2008 | 0.165 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 019517500X, Paperback)From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary.Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language--"so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy"--and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor Herbert Coleridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making--how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient than anticipated--and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press. We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium--the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it--and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project--a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivalled uber-dictionary. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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