X-Nico

46 unusual facts about Oxford English Dictionary


Alan William James Cousins

His grandfather on his mother's side was Sir James Murray, first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Cousins attended Murray's funeral at age 11.

Baryton

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the name of the instrument is a loan word from French baryton or Italian baritono, and ultimately derives from Greek bary- + tonos 'deep-pitched'.

Boudu Saved from Drowning

"The Oxford English Dictionary says that hippie is a hipster; a person usually exotically dressed; a beatnik. None of this sounds remotely like Boudu. Boudu doesn't reject conventional values: he never had them in the first place: you wouldn't catch him doing anything as pussy-footing as 'rejecting conventional values.' "

Caoilfhionn Nic Pháidín

She has been an Irish language consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary since 1985.

Carnelian

The Oxford English Dictionary calls "carnelian" a perversion of "cornelian", by subsequent analogy with the Latin word caro, carnis, flesh.

Catlinite

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "fine white kind of clay, which forms a ductile paste with water".

Chasse-marée

It may be this which led the compiler of the Oxford English Dictionary to translate the vessel's name as 'tide-chaser'.

Compact Oxford English Dictionary

The Compact Editions of the Oxford English Dictionary, which contain the full text of the Oxford English Dictionary photographically reduced to fit in one or two volumes instead of up to 20 volumes for the conventional editions.

Cretinism

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the translation of the French term into "human creature" implies that the label "Christian" is a reminder of the humanity of the afflicted, in contrast to brute beasts.

Cursor Mundi

Its nearly 30,000 lines of eight-syllable couplets are linguistically important as a solid record of the Northumbrian English dialect of the era, and it is therefore the most-often quoted single work in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Dirigisme

In English it is also dirigism and both spellings are used by the OED.

Dower

But the word dower has been used since Chaucer (The Clerk's Tale) in the sense of dowry, and is recognized as a definition of dower in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Duomo

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, and to Lo Zingarelli, the word duomo derives from the Latin word "domus", meaning house, as a cathedral is the "house of God", or domus Dei.

Fornication

1300; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records a figurative use as well: "The forsaking of God for idols".

Gloster Gorcock

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, gorcock is a Scottish and Northern English name for the male of the Red Grouse.

Godwin's law

In 2012, "Godwin's Law" became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Ground zero

The Oxford English Dictionary, citing the use of the term in a 1946 New York Times report on the destroyed city of Hiroshima, defines ground zero as "that part of the ground situated immediately under an exploding bomb, especially an atomic one."

Guanine

As the Oxford English Dictionary notes, guanine is "A white amorphous substance obtained abundantly from guano, forming a constituent of the excrement of birds".

Herbert Coleridge

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Herbert "Herbie" Coleridge (7 October 1830 – 23 April 1861) was a British philologist, technically the first editor of what ultimately became the Oxford English Dictionary.

Hogshead

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that the hogshead was first standardized by an act of Parliament in 1423, though the standards continued to vary by locality and content.

Jesse Sheidlower

From 1999 until 2005 he was Principal North American Editor at the Oxford English Dictionary; since 2005 he has been an editor-at-large, focusing on North American usage.

John de Monins Johnson

John de Monins Johnson (1882 – 1956) was an English papyrologist, printer of the Oxford English Dictionary, and collector.

Letter and spirit of the law

Thus, "Pharisee" has entered the language as a pejorative for one who does so; the Oxford English Dictionary defines Pharisee with one of the meanings as A person of the spirit or character commonly attributed to the Pharisees in the New Testament; a legalist or formalist.

Margaret Bryan

(The more obscure items in this list are identified by the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn) as: rails = nightdresses; bodystychets = corsets; begens = nightcaps.

Michael Proffitt

Michael Proffitt is the eighth chief editor for the Oxford English Dictionary.

Mousepad

The Oxford English Dictionary tracks the term mouse pad to the 25 August 1983, publication of InfoWorld, and the predominantly British term mousemat to 17 October 1989, in the publication 3D.

Muggle

Muggle was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003, where it is said to refer to a person who is lacking a skill.

Mycoprotein

Mycoprotein (also known as fungal protein) is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "the albuminoid which is the principal constituent of the protoplasm of the cell." "Myco" is from the Greek word for "fungus".

Nation-building

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the term nation-building back as far as 1862 in Reuben Hatch's Bible Servitude Re-examined; with special reference to pro-slavery interpretations and infidel objections.

Nihon Kokugo Daijiten

Shogakukan has compared its Nikkoku dictionary to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) because the Nikkoku represents the largest and most thorough dictionary of the Japanese language, and also provides etymologies and historical citations for its entries.

Okimono

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the loanword okimono, "A standing ornament or figure, esp. one put in a guest room of a house", and records the first usage in 1886 by William Anderson.

Oliver Miles

He married Julia Lyndall Weiner, a social worker and sister of Edmund Weiner (deputy Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary) in 1968.

Omnism

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) quotes as the term's earliest usage the 1839 long poem "Festus" by English poet Philip J. Bailey: "I am an omnist, and believe in all religions".

Oxford–Cambridge rivalry

In addition to their printing houses, the Oxford English Dictionary is a prominent English-language dictionary worldwide, while Cambridge Assessment provides a number of widely recognised qualifications for students (including GCSEs, A-levels and English-language proficiency certificates such as the Certificate in Advanced English).

Political faction

Occasionally, the term "faction" is still used more or less as a synonym for political party, but "with opprobrious sense, conveying the imputation of selfish or mischievous ends or turbulent or unscrupulous methods", according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Polynomial

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, polynomial succeeded the term binomial, and was made simply by replacing the Latin root bi- with the Greek poly-, which comes from the Greek word for many.

Raptio

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the definition "the act of carrying away a person, especially a woman, by force" besides the more general "the act of taking anything by force" (marked as obsolete) and the more specific "violation or ravishing of a woman."

Richard Chenevix Trench

Another great service to English philology was rendered by his paper, read before the Philological Society, On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries (1857), which gave the first impulse to the great Oxford English Dictionary.

Selfie

By 2013, the word "selfie" had become commonplace enough to be monitored for inclusion in the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Tommy Atkins

The Oxford English Dictionary states its origin as "arising out of the casual use of this name in the specimen forms given in the official regulations from 1815 onward"; the citation references Collection of Orders, Regulations, etc.

Wayne Oates

With the publication of Confessions of a Workaholic in 1971 he brought his neologism 'workaholic' into public use and it was soon included in the Oxford English Dictionary.

William Chester Minor

The book The Surgeon of Crowthorne (published in America as The Professor and the Madman) by Simon Winchester, was published in 1998 and chronicles both Minor's later life and his contributions to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.

C. Minor (June 1834 – March 26, 1920) was an American army surgeon and one of the largest contributors of quotations to the Oxford English Dictionary.

It was probably through his correspondence with the London booksellers that he heard of the call for volunteers from what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Wordtank G50

It also contains a standard Japanese dictionary (230,000 entries) and an abridged version of the Oxford English Dictionary (80,000 entries).


Bibliography

Webography (or webliography) – websites (the first use of the word "webliography" recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from June 1995)

Carrot and stick

The earliest citation of this expression recorded by the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary is to The Economist magazine in the December 11, 1948, issue.

Do the needful

The Oxford English Dictionary lists examples of usage from 1709 (Richard Steele in the Tatler), 1771 (Samuel Foote in Maid of Bath), 1821 (Maria Edgeworth in a letter), 1831 (Walter Scott in his journal), 1929 (I. Colvin in his Life of Dyer), and 1992 (Jeff Torrington in Swing Hammer Swing!), the last likely used humorously.

Flautist

"Flutist" is the earlier term in the English language, dating from at least 1603 (the earliest quote cited by the Oxford English Dictionary), while "flautist" is not recorded before 1860, when it was used by Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Marble Faun.

Gas Mark

The term "gas mark" was a subject of the joint BBC/OED TV series Balderdash & Piffle, in May 2005, which sought to establish the history of the term.

John Trevisa

John Trevisa is the 18th most frequently cited author in the Oxford English Dictionary and the third most frequently cited source for the first evidence of a word (after Geoffrey Chaucer and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society).

Johnnycake

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term hoecake first occurs in 1745, and the term is used by American writers such as Joel Barlow and Washington Irving.

Latte

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term caffè latte was first used in English in 1867 as caffè latte by William Dean Howells in his essay "Italian Journeys".

Ogive

Villard de Honnecourt, a 13th-century itinerant master-builder from the Picardy in the north of France, was the first writer to use the word ogive. The OED considers the French term's origin obscure; it might come from the Late Latin obviata, the feminine perfect passive participle of obviare, to resist, i.e. the arches resisting the downward force of the structure's mass.

Post-Individualism

The Oxford English Dictionary (1971) notes the adjective "individual" in 1425 referring to the Catholic Trinity, in 1600 to a mate who could not be separated from the spouse and not until 1613 as describing a particular person in contrast to a group.

Simplified Spelling Board

In response to mounting criticism from British newspapers, the board announced the additions of James Murray, the Scottish lexicographer and primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, along with Joseph Wright, an Oxford University professor of comparative philology and editor of the English Dialect Dictionary.