The history of the Oxford English Dictionary

part 1 of 10

The First Edition 1857 - 1928[6]

If there is any truth in the old Greek maxim that a large book is a great evil, English dictionaries have been steadily growing worse ever since their inception nearly four centuries ago. To set Cawdrey's slim small volume of 1604 beside the completed Oxford English Dictionary is like placing the original acorn beside the oak that has grown out of it.

The immensity of this growth is explained by the successive introduction of three new principles in lexicography. The earlier dictionary-makers followed in the line of the old glossaries, and directed their attention to such words as were likely to be unfamiliar to the ordinary person. The widening of this narrow range during the seventeenth century is made obvious by the steady increase in size through Bullokar, Cockeram, Blount, and Phillips, until in the eighteenth the principle of general inclusion was practically accepted by Kersey and Bailey. The next stage is marked by Johnson's systematic use of quotations to illustrate and justify the definitions, the many omissions still existing in the vocabulary being partly filled by later supplementary works on the same lines. When to all this was superadded the principle of historical illustration, introduced by Richardson, it became inevitable that any adequate dictionary of English must be one of the larger books of the world.

It is remarkable that Richardson's dictionary, perhaps through certain defects in his method, did not at once attract the attention it deserved. From the appearance of the first instalment in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana in 1819 to the full acceptance of the historical principle by the Philological Society almost forty years had passed, and the separate publication of his dictionary in 1836-7 did not affect to any appreciable extent the work of those lexicographers who followed in the wake of Johnson or Webster. Even his wealth of quotations remained unutilized, although they formed a natural storehouse for any who cared to search in it and bring forth 'treasures new and old' to add to those already available in the works of Johnson and his successors.

That a forward step was made towards the end of these forty years was due to the action taken by the Philological Society in the summer of 1857, apparently as the result of a suggestion made by F. J. Furnivall to Dean Trench in May. At the meeting held on 18 June 'the appointment of Messrs. Herbert Coleridge and Furnivall and Dean Trench by the Council, as a committee to collect unregistered words in English, was announced, ant that they would report to the next Meeting of the Society in November'. At this stage the idea was to prepare and publish a volume supplementary to the later editions of Johnson, or to Richardson, and containing all words omitted in either of these dictionaries.

The committee did not report in November, but on the fifth of that month one of its members, Dean Trench, read the first part of a paper 'On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries', while the report was postponed till 3 December. This interval allowed the second part of the paper to be read on 19 November, when the Society showed its appreciation by resolving 'That The Dean of Westminster be requested to publish his interesting and valuable Paper. To this request he kindly acceded.' Publication followed almost immediately, the first edition bearing the date 1857 and the title 'On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries, being the substance of two papers read before the Philological Society, Nov. 5 and Nov. 19, 1857. By Richard Chenevix Trench, D. D., Dean of Westminster.'

Even at this day, after the lapse of a hundred and fifty years and the advance in English studies which has taken place during that time, Dean Trench's paper retains its value as a statement of what an English dictionary ought to be. No one who reads it can fail to see how clearly he anticipated the lines on which the Society's dictionary was ultimately compiled - all of them, indeed, a necessary result from the historical principle which he laid down as the only sound basis for the work.

6. This account is reproduced, with only minor modifications, from the 'Historical Introduction' to the OED published in 1933. [return]

part 1 of 10