Hunting the ochidore: Charles Kingsley in the OED

'O! the blue ochidore! Look to the blue ochidore! Who've put ochidore to maister's pole?' It was too true: neatly inserted between his neck, and his collar as he stooped forward, was a large live shore-crab, holding on tight with both hands.

Charles Kingsley was, it seemed, the only man who had ever mentioned the word ochidore. Consequently, in 1901, when the relevant section of the OED was being prepared for publication, it caused a great problem, for this quotation from his novel, Westward Ho!, was the only evidence that could be found for the word. Others began to investigate; their results came back to the Dictionary office, and we can follow their progress by reading the letters that survive in the OED archives.

First the vicar of Clovelly, T. L. Simkin, set out to explore the term in the village, where Kingsley had been rector. He had no success among the local young fishermen, but he did eventually discover an elderly sailor of 85 who had known Kingsley well and understood at once what Simkin meant by the word ochidore. The old man said that it meant 'spider crab' but, when the rector asked if that was the same as the shore-crab, the ancient sailor replied that it was, but that the sailors always called it the spider crab. Mr Simkin felt that he had never heard anyone but Kingsley call it by the name 'ochidore'; it was therefore, he felt, not the Clovelly local name for it. The old sailor said he had often heard Kingsley call it so, but he had no idea where the writer got it from; he 'imagined he had invented it, he often called things by very funny names'.

The old sailor described the crab to the Clovelly rector; it was edible, with a round back, and its legs were very much longer than those of the common crab. It was this description which caught the eye of James Murray, the OED editor, when he read it, and he added to the Clovelly vicar's letter 'evidently Maia Squinado the large spider crab, of which this is a good description'.

While these investigations were going on there was more exploration by E. L. Brandreth, a London barrister and a devoted Dictionary man, working hard in the British Museum. Charles Kingsley's daughters were invited to help. Miss Rose Kingsley did not reply when approached; her sister, Mrs Mary St Leger Harrison, the widow of a former rector of Clovelly, did reply, but simply to say that she felt sure that ochidore was only a North Devon coast word and - feeling delighted to have dealt with that - to invite the letter-writer to an afternoon tea. In the end Brandreth suggested that 'the errors of Kingsley, himself a noted naturalist' should not be shown up. However, James Murray did not approve of Brandreth's proposed wording: 'A name maybe humorously invented by Kingsley for some kind of crab, as the name appears not to be known on our English coast.' The Dictionary entry for ochidore which eventually appeared in 1902 simply quoted the passage from Westward Ho!, and appended an extract from the Rev. Simkin's letter recording the recollections of the old man of Clovelly.