A day in the life

This is a momentous day. After what seems like an eternity, I am about to finish editing milk. So it is with a certain amount of excitement that I get to my desk in the morning. My job for the last few weeks has been editing all the entries in the OED from mild to Milky Way, preparing them to be published in the OED Online.

Momentous day or not, the editorial process remains basically the same whichever entry an editor is working on. Ongoing research means that there are antedatings to be found and added to the quotation paragraphs of many entries (with the evidence currently available to editors, over one in three OED senses can now be given an earlier citation). More recent evidence also comes to light, sometimes with the consequence of making a word which was previously held to be obsolete current (if somewhat rare). As editors we now have a large number of scholarly and commercial databases available to us, accessible via the Internet, which provide rich seams of evidence previously untapped. Not all contain modern texts—some are facsimile reproductions going back to the early 18th century, and so can prove useful in gathering more evidence for a seemingly sparsely illustrated term.

Although a large amount of time is spent compiling further evidence for the quotation paragraphs, OED2 definitions also often need to be edited and updated. Newly added quotations might give the definition a slightly different nuance which will have to be covered. Occasionally the definition, if it comes directly from the First Edition, is written in rather quaint Victorian terms which, charming as it is, will have to be updated into clear modern English, without losing any shade of meaning, as in the case of prothodaw ('a prime simpleton, a noodle of the first rank'), or, more famously, hairbrush ('a toilet brush for smoothing and dressing the hair'). This can be especially tricky when you are faced with a word which died out centuries ago, and there is very little evidence for it.

As well as editing a given alphabetical range of words, I am also responsible for maintaining the OED3 e-mail account, through which the public may communicate with OED editors, send in their contributions, and ask questions about the project. An eclectic mix of material is sent on a daily basis to the account, ranging from antedatings discovered during someone's academic research to pleas for help with homework.

As well as updating entries, editors are frequently called on to add 'new' senses within an entry—although often these are not so much new as previously overlooked. As I cast my eyes over the entry for milk n., checking that the senses are in chronological order, I notice that there is an entry for milk drinker, but none for the much commoner milk drink, so I decide to add it. As I am searching for evidence (earliest date so far is 1935), I realize that it is not as straightforward as it first seemed. Milk drink is a drink which is milk-based, but it is also a drink which is prepared with milk. Two different things, and reading the quotations, it is not always immediately obvious which is which. So it all takes a little longer than envisaged.

As 6 o'clock beckons, I feel my work on milk is done. After seventeen senses, numerous subsenses, and two hundred and thirteen compounds (it seems you can add almost any word to milk to make a valid compound), milk is but a memory. Well, until tomorrow, when I turn my attention to the verb. But for the moment I can enjoy my small triumph.

I finished milk today, oh boy!