The history of the Oxford English Dictionary (continued)

The first Supplement, 1928-1933

From the earliest days of the publication of the Dictionary it had been envisaged that a Supplement or Supplements might be necessary, in order to keep the historical record of the language up to date, and to take account of subsequent research into the vocabulary already covered by the Dictionary. This possibility had been kept in view not only by members of the Dictionary staff but also by a certain number of the regular 'readers' who maintained a continuous flow of contributions to the material from which the work was being compiled; moreover, communications of corrections and additions were constantly sent in by many interested users of the published work. Consequently, when the original Dictionary was completed in 1928, a great body of quotations had been amassed with a view to a Supplement on a grand scale, which should not only treat the new words and new meanings that had come into being during the publications of the successive sections of the Dictionary, but should also correct and amplify the evidence for what was already in print. It was soon discovered, however, that such a Supplement, if it were to be at all a worthy and adequate addition to the main work, would demand intensive research by experienced workers extending over many years. This course could not be contemplated when the possibility of preparing a Supplement was considered as work drew to an end on the original Dictionary.

It was therefore resolved to produce a supplementary volume, the scope of which would in the main be restricted to the treatment of those accessions of words and senses which had taken place during the preceding fifty years. To this limitation there were to be two principal exceptions: items of modern origin and contemporary currency that had been either intentionally or accidentally omitted from the Dictionary would be included, and account would be taken of earlier evidence for American uses, which Sir William Craigie, at that time editing the Dictionary of American English in Chicago, was in a position to supply. Temporary or casual uses were recognized only in so far as they marked stages in the recent history of scientific discovery, invention, or fashion, or illustrated the progress of thought, usage, or custom during the half-century then under review. A few important corrections or amplifications of existing definitions were introduced under the necessity of bringing the work into line with recent research. The details of this policy were established by Dr C. T. Onions, under whose editorship the first Supplement to the OED was published in 1933.

The chief characteristics of the vocabulary set forth in the 1933 Supplement can be summarized briefly: on the technical side, it exhibited the great enlargement of the terminology of the arts and sciences at the close of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth - biochemistry, radio telegraphy and telephony, mechanical transport on land, at sea, and in the air, psychoanalysis, the cinema, to name a few outstanding subjects; on the purely linguistic side, the varied development of colloquial idiom and slang, to which the United States of America had made a large contribution, but in which the British dominions and dependencies of the time also contributed a conspicuous share. As in the main work, there was continually present the problem of the inclusion or omission of the more esoteric scientific terms and of the many foreign words reflecting the widened interest in the conditions and customs of distant countries; it was acknowledged that the problem had not been satisfactorily and comprehensively solved in every instance, as the material from which the Supplement was compiled had been collected principally while the original Dictionary was still in preparation, and following the same guidelines in operation during that work. In one respect the 1933 Supplement went somewhat beyond the limits of the main Dictionary, in its more generous inclusion of proper names; but even so, these were not admitted unless they had some allusive interest or were important for some linguistic, literary, or historical reason.

The result was a Supplement of over 800 pages which went far towards completing the documentation of the English language up to the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century and just beyond. However, extensive though it was, it still represented only a restricted selection from a large collection of material from which a much larger volume might have been produced. Once it had been completed, the OED team dispersed, and the editorial staff, including the last surviving Editor of the original Dictionary still in Oxford, Dr C. T. Onions, turned to other work. The OED library in Oxford was broken up, and quotation slips that had not been used were stored away, some later to be dispatched to other historical dictionary projects, notable for use in the preparation of the Middle English Dictionary at Ann Arbor, Michigan and the projected dictionary of Early Modern English.