December 2000 newsletter

The production of historical dictionaries is a long and arduous process. Samuel Johnson devoted a large part of his writing life to his Dictionary, and James Murray died before his great 12-volume history of English was completed. It sometimes seems that the infinite complexity of the language defies any attempt to capture it in a finite time. Work began on the current revision of the OED in the mid-1990s, coinciding with an unprecedented burgeoning of computerized resources.

While this technology has assisted the editorial process in many ways, it has brought with it the release of vast electronic archives of literary material which have to be taken into account during the revision process. No wonder the editors often feel they're running to stay in the same place, although there is no doubt that this embarrassment of riches is reflected in the enhanced quality of the OED revised text. But even given this inevitable expansion of the task, the preparation of the OED proceeds at a surprisingly swift pace by the standards of other historical dictionaries, as Edmund Weiner demonstrates.

In addition to the electronic resources already mentioned, traditional printed sources continue to play a major role in the compilation of the OED. One such text is the recently published inventories of King Henry VIII. This treasure trove of sixteenth-century royal artefacts has been painstakingly read for the Dictionary by Jane Griffiths, who provides a fascinating insight into the contents of Henry's wardrobes, cupboards, and drawers.