The Dictionary Hunter-Gatherers

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

In the 19th century, the Oxford English Dictionary was something like the Wikipedia of its day, in that much of its information was crowdsourced.

Now, yes, of course, there were the academic elites working on the dictionary, but it’s also full of information gathered by volunteers.

James Murray took over as editor in 1879, and he put out an appeal for the public to send in examples of how words were being used in the books that they were reading.

And he asked them to note every word that strikes you as rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar, or used in a peculiar way.

And anybody could send in a slip of paper with that information, plus the name and date of the publication, the author, and the quotation in which the word appears.

And for decades, a few hundred people answered that call.

Or at least, that was the story until just a few years ago.

That’s when Sarah Ogilvie, a linguist and lexicographer, discovered something in the basement of Oxford University Press that took her breath away.

She happened across James Murray’s old address books, and she realized that she was looking at a treasure trove, because those books contain the names and addresses of not hundreds of contributors to the dictionary, but thousands of them from all over the world, all walks of life.

And she spent the next eight years doing some serious sleuthing to find out just who these volunteers were.

And she came back with amazing stories that she shares in a new book called The Dictionary People, The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary.

And the book is an absolute delight.

It’s chock full of information about language, about history, and it has fascinating profiles of the contributors who include people like a Scottish explorer who endured ghastly conditions in the Arctic, and a London businessman who was thought to own the world’s largest collection of pornography.

And there was an eccentric Englishman who always wore a coat with 28 pockets that were stuffed with nail clippers, string, and knife sharpener, academic papers, and even though he was a teetotaler, a corkscrew and a scone, just in case he ran into somebody he knew who was hungry or thirsty.

And whenever he walked, he made a noise like a kitchen drawer, she writes.

It turns out that there were also hundreds of Americans who contributed to this quintessentially British dictionary, and they include a chemist who invented the special green ink to use on currency to guard against counterfeiting, giving us the term greenbacks.

So clearly, Ogilvy went down a whole lot of rabbit holes.

They’re all super interesting.

And I tell you, Grant, reading this book feels like meeting up in a pub with your smart, nerdy friend who’s already waiting there for you.

And as you’re sitting down, she says, you won’t believe what I found today.

Oh, what a perfect description of this book.

Sarah Ogilvy has written something for the everyday audience.

It’s not for specialists or people deep in the dictionary field.

It’s very readable.

It’s enjoyable.

As you’ve explained, Martha, it’s not about the great men of history.

It’s about people you’ve never heard of and who, before this book, haven’t been chronicled in any meaningful way.

Yes.

As you said, it’s enjoyable, and I would say it’s joyful.

This is the book that I’m recommending to all my word nerd friends.

It’s called The Dictionary People, The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary, and it’s by Sarah Ogilvie.

As always, we will link to that book from our website at waywordradio.org.

And, you know, there are dozens of ways to reach us.

You can find them on that same website at waywordradio.org/contact.