OED: 75 years and more (continued)

1953 (50 years ago)

1953 might seem to be a fallow year in the life of the OED. Twenty years after the publication of the one-volume Supplement to the Dictionary, the idea of a revised and expanded Supplement was just beginning to be discussed within OUP, but it would be another two years before an office was established at No. 40 Walton Crescent by R. C. Goffin in preparation for the arrival of editorial staff. (Robert Burchfield was appointed as Editor in 1957.) But even in 1953 there is ample evidence that the OED's position was now firmly established. In court cases the OED's definitions were being cited as material evidence: for example, in February the Dictionary's definition of artificial was cited in a dispute over whether nylon could be described as "artificial silk", and in October a conviction for importuning was challenged on the basis of the OED's definition of the verb importune. On a lighter note, on 20 June the distinguished British judge Sir Norman Birkett gave a presidential address to the English Association in which he echoed Stanley Baldwin in remarking that he too would choose the OED if he were stranded on a desert island.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, another great project of English historical lexicography, and one with strong OED connections, was under way. The first section of the Middle English Dictionary had been published in 1952, and during 1953 further fascicles appeared. The OED's entire collection of Middle English quotations had been shipped to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the use of the MED editors; and we had even exported one member of staff - Hereward T. Price, formerly one of Murray's assistants, who went on to serve as Associate Editor of the MED and was for a brief period in informal charge of the project.