Fascinating Letters to an OED Lexicographer

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. James Augustus Henry Murray was a Scottish autodidact, a teacher, an amateur philologist, and in 1879 he began work on what would become the revered Oxford English Dictionary. The dictionary involved a vast collaborative effort, academics and volunteer readers all writing letters to Murray helping to gather information about the use of this word and that. And he received scores of letters every day, and he wrote many more. And now, thanks to a project led by Professor Charlotte Brewer of Oxford and research fellow Stephen Turton of Cambridge, you can read those letters for yourself online.

And Grant, it’s this rich trove of correspondence with famous writers like Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, as well as with average folks who wrote to praise or to quibble with Murray’s work. And it’s really fascinating to eavesdrop on Murray and his Victorian correspondence as they wrestle with which words are obscene and how exactly to write about them in a dictionary. But one of my favorite letters is to an unknown correspondent in 1884, and this correspondent was complaining about the word advertismental.

And Murray writes in part, “I have to thank you for your advice. You will readily apprehend that I receive a good deal of that. Everybody has his own likes and dislikes in the way of words, and the spirit moves many to communicate them to me. I suppose it relieves people of some irritation to do so and makes them feel better.”

Then later he says, “You don’t like advertisemental. I like it as well as testamental, monumental, sacramental, governmental, fundamental, instrumental, or any other mental. And it is to me a distinct increase of power to the language to be able to say advertisemental triumphs instead of triumphs in the way of advertising. But the dictionary does not advise you to say so. It merely records the fact that such has been said.”

And Grant, you can just hear the weariness in his voice, can’t you?

I thought you’d appreciate that.

Yeah, yeah, that’s the life of the lexicographer is just defending your mode of operation. You’re showing how the language is used rather than demonstrating how it should be used.

Exactly. I guess we should point out what a scriptorium is. This was the name that Murray gave to the small shed, at least it started out as a small shed, where he was doing his work, where he was gathering all this information about the English language.

Oh, yeah. There’s pictures of it.

It’s a wonderful space filled with cubbyholes and shelves and all kinds of different cabinetry filled with scripts and manuscripts and papers, everything, recording the citations and all of the work. It’s just wonderful. You would just love to take a time machine there.

Oh, yeah, and visit Murray with that long, long beard, right?

Yeah, and all of the people working for him.

It’s a long list of incredible names attached to what was the New English Dictionary and became the Oxford English Dictionary.

Well, you can check out those letters at murrayscriptorium.org.

And we’ll link to that from our website at waywordradio.org.

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