Simon Winchester has done a great job of drawing out the human stories behind the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary: the problems getting the project of the ground, the personal feuds, the huge amount of effort involved in keeping it going and in bringing it to completion.

There's plenty of humour in the book and a sizeable scattering of interesting lexicographical titbits from the work itself. A fascinating, accessible read. ( )

Read this for library school. Actually enjoyed it. ( )

After doing nigh on 400 of these LibraryThing reviews (I’m gunning for you, bluetyson!), I’m starting to recognize a few of the warning signs that a book is gonna be silly tripe. “Named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times”, unfortunately, is one (what is up with these people and the books they make bestsellers? Why can’t they just stick to TV?). Being about language and written by a non-academic, twice as unfortunately, is another (Mark Liberman is right:linguists are doing a bad, bad job inculcating a basic knowledge of the discipline in the general public, similar to what they have in chemistry, for example, and we need a required course in linguistics at the high school level, or popular books about language are going to remain the province of bullshit merchants like Bill Bryson).

But the most telling sign of all comes when I start reading and folding over pages—as I do—when I find something notable, whether it’s a beautiful passage or a pithy epigraph or something that I expect to be of use in my research or something that’s just silly and laughable. As the pages fold, a good/evil ratio starts to emerge, and most books find themselves firmly on one side of it. Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary chooses the wrong side.

It’s, well, “criminal” is a strong word, but surely at least a misdemeanor or venial sin to have a story as full of intrinsic interest as this one fall into your lap and make such a sow’s ear out of it. Winchester comes off both stupid and repulsive, with his pandering and sniggering and constant dweebish insistence on embracing a sort of cod-version of the idiom and attitudes of the era about which he is writing. (In addition to my main tags, which note the date I finish reading a book, I have started including secondary tags when books fall into what I once dubbed “serial autoecholalia”, when an author obviously, partway through writing a work, suddenly remembered or learned a particular word existed, was taken with it, and proceeds to throw it in willy-nilly for a while, before getting bored or embarrassed and letting it drop again. In this book that word is “martinet”. Everyone’s a “martinet” as long as they disagree with James Murray (the august editor of the early OED), and then we get to see how they were just grumpy or whatever and still have inner humanity when they get over themselves and come in on the side of manifest lexicographical destiny.) It’s all, and this isn’t a real quote, “Mr. Dickon Hulme, Esq., of Thistlebottom Lane, North Glumwich, contributed definitions of numerous words concerned with the Orient, whose mysteries he had penetrated during his sojourn in Kashmir with the 21st Coldpuddle Rifles.” You can’t fool us, Simon Winchester. Books have publication dates, right inside the front cover for everyone to see. AND YOURS IS 2003.

You get the idea—the epic tale of the greatest book ever, mostly ruined by Winchester’s dumbdowningness and creepy Victorianophilia (if he doesn’t vote BNP, it’s because he’ll die a Tory like his dear old dad, and if he does, it’s because Cameron will bend over for the Europeans and blackfellows. That’s actually way harsh, and I disavow it immediately after having said it, but it’s the feeling you get.) There are great moments, like learning that South Africa had its own equivalent of the Academie Francaise (it would) or just how many of the OED’s contributors were in asylums or jail (all of ‘em!), but they’re just a little bit too compromised by weird Colonel Blimp moves, fetishization of English as qualitatively superior to other languages, total lack (as the fetishization thing perhaps implies) of linguistic knowledge, total lack of respect for his audience, and all-around assiness. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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? ( )

Very detailed. See also "The Professor and the Madman" by Winchester for an interesting footnote story re: the making of the OED. ( )

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. ( )

This fairly slim volume packs in tons of information about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, a massive undertaking begun in the 1850s, the first edition of which was not completed until 1928, and under revision for a 3rd edition today. Though sometimes getting bogged down in details, this is an overall fascinating account of the dictionary, from the recognition of a need for one to the ongoing revisions necessary as the English language continues to change.

Winchester's love for words and the OED comes through in his prose riddled with words (fittingly enough) that will expand your vocabulary -- "gallimaufry," "polymathic," and "oleaginous" to name a few. Furthermore, his research shines through as one gets the sense that he's telling only a fraction of the stories he could. Even as I learned more about the history of the OED and came away with an appreciation of the impossible size of the project, my interest in learning more was whetted. ( )

well-written story of an unparalleled effort

Interesting account of the 70 year making of the monumental OED, the methodology, struggles, editors, volunteers. Recommended. ( )

See my review: http://jzsbooks.blogspot.com/2008/07/... ( )

What went wrong?

I love lexicography, I love the OED (heck, I even got a word into it). I love popular nonfiction. I like the 19th century. I like history.

So why didn't I like this book? There were moments I did, like the blitz of letterpress details and type-geek tidbits that left me salivating in the middle of the book. But so much of the tale is an unraveling of the political forces both propelling the dictionary project and threatening to destroy it. I know these elements are essential, but my interests lie elsewhere.

This is the second book I've read by Simon Winchester about a topic that I have passion for (the other being "The Map that Changed the World"), and the second that has disappointed me. I can't put my finger on what it is about his writing style, which is amenable to most other readers, that niggles at me. It feels laundry-list-ish and a bit too linear.

Still, I adore the Oxford English Dictionary. So I was in turmoil during my read--thrilled to learn more about the OED but stabbing my way through a dull portrayal. ( )

Simon Winchester is kind of like a healthy, low-carbohydrate snack. I mean it’s educational and all so its not bad for you, but it’s still mind candy. Winchester writes with (sometimes fawning) enthusiasm and loves to add literary detail wherever and whenever he can. It’s no wonder one can’t help falling in love with the subject matter. This book tales the epic and dramatic story (in Winchester’s language) of the Oxford English Dictionary from conception to … well it’s never really been completed, but the book tells the story of the first edition in detail and brings it up to present day in the epilogue. Now I want to read books and find words to submit to the OED myself. ( )

What kind of writer can take a topic like the making of a dictionary, and create an enjoyable book? Winchester does just this, although I am certain someone who doesn't enjoy words will not find the book as interesting as I did. For a general audience, Winchester gives insight into defining terms, something I find useful as I study my Bible, and attempt to allow the Bible to define itself.

How the meanings of terms can best be understood.

The Oxford English Dictionary is the alpha and omega of the english langauge. But few people know it's amazing history. This books traces the development of the OED from its first inception to the printing of the first volume. The Victoian Age is full of marvelous charachters and people of vision and the movers behind the OED were no exception. This book is entertaining and informative.

Favorites, Completed, Deployment ( )

Title: The Meaning of Everything, the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Author: Simon Winchester
250 pages

"By this new World of Words, I found we were slipt into that condition which Seneca coplains of in his lifetime; when men's minds begin to endure themselves to dislike, whatever is usual is disdained: They affect novelty in speech, the recal orewarn and uncouth words; And some there are that think it a grace, if their speech hover, in thereby hold the hearer in suspence, etc." (Blount, as quoted on p.24)

"Blount...realized the ceaseless magnitude of the task...of gathering together all of the thousands upo thousands of ever-changing words with which generations of invaders and wanderers had littered and seasoned the peculiarly English means of saying things. To remark that English lexocography is like herding cats, as the saying has it, is only the half of it." (p.25)

"Though George Orwell might have longed for an Anglo-Saxon revival, though John Dryden loathed French loanwords, despite Joseph Addison's campaigns against contractions...and although Alexander Pope pleaded for the retention of dignity and Daniel Defoe wrote of his hatred of the 'inundation' of curse-words and Jonathan Swift mounted a life-long attempt to 'fix our language forever'--no critic and advocate of immutability has ever once managed properly or even marginally to outwit the English language's capacity for focy and relentlessly slippery flexibility." (p.29)

"I found our speech copious and without order, and energetick without rules: wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated." (Ssmuel Johnson, as quoted on p.31)

"When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with the prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, with the obscure recesses of northern learning which I should enter and ransack...But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer." (Johnson, as quoted on p.94,5)

"Jowett...began behaving in a way that Murray found most disturbing. Jowett--whose publicly stated aim was 'to arrange my life in the best possible way, that I may be able to arrange other people's'." (p.127)

"I think it was God's will. In times of faith, I am sure of it. I look back and see that every step of my life has been as it were imposed upon me--not a thing of choice; and that the whole training of my life with its multifarious and irregular incursions into nearly every science and many arts, seems to have had the express purpose of fitting me to do this Dictionary...So I work with a firm belief that I am doing what God has fitted me for, and so made my duty; and a hope that He will strengthen me to see the end of it...But I am only an instrument, only the means that He has provided, and there is no credit due to me, except that of trying to do my duty." (Murray, as quoted on p.134)

"The circle of the English language has a well-defined centre, but no discernable circumference." (Murray, as quoted on p.250) ( )

You really have to be into the English language and the history thereof to be entertained by this, which I'm not. Oh well, it was okay, well written, just not that interesting to me. ( )

Coooooooool story. Exhasperating writing, though. Sort of like a hazing ritual, but its neat to read something where you need a dictionary to get through every paragraph. Sometimes the meandering off topic can be a bit much. But, wow, like, wow, like, wow. I'm glad I'm not a lexiconographer. ( )

Light but fun. Lots of amusing anecdotes, but nothing that I felt drawn to investigating further. Nicely written, but nothing special. ( )

The epic history of the creation of the vast Oxford English Dictionary.

This book is absorbing even if you have already read Simon Winchester's prequel, The Surgeon of Crowthorne, the story of one of the OED's major contributors. (The S of C is called something else in the US.)

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the OED is its democratic conception. Without an army of unpaid contributors offering their research unpaid, often for decades, the OED would not exist. One wonders not that one person could devote so much selfless effort for the love of words, but that so many such people exist.

Another fascinating aspect of the story is the sheer logistical challenge of collating and sifting so much material in the age of the inkwell. One sees the 19th century getting to grips with the corporate managerial problems of the 21st century...and not doing a bad job at all! ( )

All too often, nonfiction with an interesting premise gets bogged down when the author takes a dry, overly scholarly approach. I'm pleased to report that that isn't at all the case here. Though Winchester's take is decidedly scholarly, he imbues his writing with such obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter that the book is a pure delight to read. I enjoyed every page and found myself rushing to my dictionary as soon as I was done, eager to examine just how it was put together. ( )