Will the Oxford English Dictionary Be More 'European' After its First Comprehensive Revision since its First Edition of 1884-1928?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.200410395Keywords:
dictionaries, lexicography, philology, Oxford English Dictionary, language change, neologisms, loanwords, etymology, Internet, Anglicisms, modern European languagesAbstract
This paper asks a puzzling question in its title, and then looks at various aspects of the current revision of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED; Third Edition, 2000-) in search of answers. After a brief account of the history of the dictionary from the nineteenth century up to the present day, it examines some new words which have entered English from the languages of continental Europe, and then reviews some of the older words in English, which entered English at a much earlier period. Aspects of a shared European culture emerge through the exchange of vocabulary (both imports into and exports from English), and the paper highlights types of text (including Internet sources) which are important in plotting this language change.
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References
GÖRLACH, Manfred. (ed.). 2001. A dictionary of European anglicisms: a usage dictionary of anglicisms in sixteen European languages. Oxford: Oxford U. P.
MURRAY, K. M. Elisabeth. 1977. Caught in the web of words: James A.H. Murray and the 'Oxford English Dictionary'. New Haven and London: Yale U. P.
Oxford English Dictionary:
OED1: MURRAY, James A. H., Henry BRADLEY, William CRAIGIE and C. T. ONIONS. (eds.). 1933. The Oxford English Dictionary. London: Oxford U. P. (Previously published in fascicles between 1884 and 1928 under the title A new English dictionary on historical principles.) BURCHFIELD, Robert William. 1972-86. A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
OED2: SIMPSON, John A. and Edmund S. C. WEINER. (eds.). 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary (second edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Also published on CDROM from 1992 and online from 2000 at http://www.oed.com).
OED3: SIMPSON, John A. (ed.). 2000. The Oxford English Dictionary (third edition). Oxford: Oxford U. P. (Also published online from 2000 at http://www.oed.com).
WINCHESTER, Simon. 1998. The surgeon of Crowthorne. London: Viking. (Published in the United States in 1998 under the title The professor and the madman: a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: HarperCollins).
—. 2003. The meaning of everything: the story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford U. P.
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Copyright (c) 2004 John Simpson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
