Dispatches from the Front

The Prefaces to ‘A New English Dictionary’

The casual user of the OED can perhaps be excused for regarding it as merely an excellent dictionary. The OED is largely silent about its own history, both in anecdotal material and in what can be inferred from the entries. Consistency, accuracy, and completeness make the OED a unique reference work, but by their very nature these virtues conceal the people and events involved in the Dictionary's development. In many ways it is the story of the struggle to produce the OED that makes the result so satisfying, but for details of this story we must turn elsewhere.

A most interesting set of writings about the development of the OED is contained in its Prefaces. The OED, originally ‘A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles’, was published in regular installments from 1884 to 1928.  These installments or ‘fascicles’ were generally supplied with prefatory material written by the chief editor. With the exception of Murray’s General Explanations, this material has been excluded in later printings of the OED and thus has been unavailable to many scholars and dictionary enthusiasts.

The Prefaces contain a wealth of historical and lexicographical information about the OED. Each Preface lists the editors, drafters, proofreaders, contributors, and scholars who participated in the fascicle’s production or the investigation of its sources. The magnitude of their labours is well illustrated by tables of statistical data comparing the fascicle to the corresponding sections of other dictionaries, including Johnson’s, Cassell’s, the Century, and Funk’s.  Each Preface recounts the difficult or interesting problems that were solved, and outlines the general etymological character of words in that part of the alphabet. As well, the Prefaces contain a number of additions and corrections to the entries as they appear in the fascicles; these emendations were subsequently incorporated in the Supplement

As in everything else, Murray’s Prefaces set the standard for the OED. While the other editors followed the general format he established, Murray’s Prefaces are always distinguishable. More than any other editor, Murray indulges in extended discussion of etymological and lexicographical curiosities, as for example with BE-, CROSS, ODD, PENNY and TAKE, and his explanation of why American was included while African was excluded (Vol. I). Too, Murray does not hesitate to remind us of the value of the historical method (H–HOD), the conjectures, errors and spurious words in existing works (CLO–CONSIGNER, PENNAGE–PLAT), or the hours that might be spent on the etymology of a word, with the only result being the notation ‘derivation unknown’ (Vol. I).

For me the Prefaces are most interesting as timely reports of the campaign to produce the OED. These dispatches from the lexicographical front contain not only statistics and lists of names, but also the colourful personalities and milestones that marked the battle. Here we find recognition of the munificence of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths (Vol. VI) and the rededication of the OED to King George V (Vol. X, Part II). We observe the increase in Murray’s fame as displayed on the Title Pages, from ‘sometime president of the Philological Society’ to knighthood and numerous degrees and memberships in learned societies. Buried in the lists of names we find notices of fresh recruits, including C.T. Onions (Vol. III) and W.A. Craigie (G), and memorials to the fallen, especially Murray (ST–STANDARD, TURNDUN–TZIRID), Henry Bradley (W), Frederick J. Furnivall (S–SH), Fitzedward Hall (L–LAP), and Henry Hucks Gibbs (PLAT–PREMIOUS). Most of all, in reading the Prefaces one experiences in some small degree the uncertainty, the obstacles, and the victory of those who persevered.

This reproduction of the Prefaces on the OED website was scanned using Adobe Acrobat 9 and extensively cleaned up by hand. Mike Parker of Adobe assisted with advice on ClearScan.  My special thanks to Steven Wood, whose tireless investigations have resulted in the appearance in this collection of the previously-missing FEE-FIELD, HOD-HORIZONTAL, and S-SEA-EEL.  I am also grateful to John Simpson and Yvonne Warburton for their encouragement of this project.

Darrell Raymond

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

March 2009

A note on the tables

The tables of Fascicles, Letters, and Volumes summarize some of the statistical data about the OED given in the Prefaces, and where possible, link directly to the fascicle, letter, or volume preface. Each table lists the number of main words, subordinate words, special combinations (those requiring explanation), obvious combinations (those requiring no explanation), total number of words, and number of illustrative quotations, along with a breakdown of the main words into those in current usage and those considered alien or obsolete. Wherever possible the numbers in the tables are exactly those given in the Prefaces; numbers which were not given but could be computed from other totals are italicized.

The number of obvious combinations and quotations appear not to have been tallied for the first two volumes of the OED, though from the overall total we can infer that these volumes contain some 5267 obvious combinations.

The totals given in the Preface to Volume VIII list 1633 main words, 423 subordinate entries, and 1188 words in current use for Q, while the totals given in the Q-REE list 1407 main words, 649 subordinate entries, and 962 words in current use. This discrepancy may be due to a variance in the definition of ‘main word’ and ‘subordinate entry’, since the overall total is the same. I have chosen to use the totals given in the Preface to Volume VIII, since this would be the later calculation. The number of quotations for D—DEPRAVATION is an estimate.