Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CONTENTS
1. The contribution of women to the OED An article by Meraud Grant Ferguson and Jemma Best 2. Project news Brief notes on some recent events 3. Appeals Can you help with these words? 4. Interesting antedatings More words that are older than you might think
News
Editorial
In both they are made up of headwords, parts of speech, variant spellings, etymologies, definitions, and illustrative quotation paragraphs, and give the earliest available evidence for each sense. Thus, the essence of the lexicographers work in creating these entries has remained the same as those in the first edition. There is a striking contrast, however, between the circumstances in which James Murray and the other early editors prepared entries for publication, and those in which the current OED editors work. Instead of the small corrugated-iron scriptorium in Murrays garden, the OED now occupies a large office in the main building of the Oxford University Press. While lexicographers still use the files of 64 slips of paper to communicate with colleagues of the past and the future, for
Entries in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contain the same components as those in the first edition.
many years now most work has been done using computers. The editors have recently begun to use a specially designed new system, which is a world away from the pen and paper of the first edition, and which is described in detail in this issue of OED News. Another difference the original OED editors would notice if they were able to see the modern Dictionary offices would be the increase in the number of editors working on the project, and that many of these editors are women. This issue takes a look at the changing ways in which women have contributed to the creation and content of the OED since work on the first edition began over one hundred and twenty years ago.
Jemma Best, Newsletter Editor and Senior Assistant Editor, OED
OED News
editorial staff for over twenty years. It is difficult to be sure exactly how much responsibility these women were given, and how they interacted with the other editorial staff. We know that originally they were given fairly menial tasks, but that Eleanor, at least, went on to write definitions. She also prepared the entry for make-up and other compound headwords following on from the entry for make. Several of the wives of male members of the NED editorial staff also became closely, if often unofficially, involved with the project. Ada Murray was instrumental in her husbands decision to accept the editorship, acted as his unpaid secretary for many years, read for the OED, and assisted the project in many other ways. During the First World War, Craigies department was almost emptied of men, so his wife helped him to pre-sort material relating to the letter U. After the war was over, she, along with some of their daughters, continued to be on the payroll. Many other educated, literary women helped out to various degrees with slip-sorting, proof-reading, subediting, reading for, and promoting the OED during this period. Among these were the writer, Harriet Martineau, the novelists Charlotte Yonge and Hilda May Poynter, and the historian Edith Perronet Thompson and her sister Elizabeth, who between them supplied over fifteen thousand quotations. In fact, as K. M. Elisabeth Murray argued in Caught in the Web of Words, the lack of other intellectual and scholarly opportunities available to intelligent women at the time made the response of women to the Dictionary particularly warm. Women were not admitted to full membership of Oxford University until 1920, for example, and no woman was appointed to a full professorship there until 1948. Staff photographs from a later period show many more female faces, as more women entered the workforce. Often, in fact, there are more women than men in the pictures taken during work on the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1960s and 1970s, and on the OED3 staff, women outnumber men by roughly two to one. Women currently head four of the six main editorial groups, leading the two groups working on general revision, the science group, and the bibliography group, with men running the etymology and new words groups. The position of Director, Editorial Projects, is also held by a woman, Penny Silva:
DECEMBER 2005
I attended Rhodes University, where I was taught by the pre-eminent South African English lexicographers William and Jean Branford. As a new graduate I became one of the first full-time editors in the Dictionary Unit for South African English at Rhodes University, working on the early entries for the large Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. In 1989, after four children and a variety of short-term jobs, I returned as Director of the Unit, and saw the Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles through to publication (OUP, 1996), with a lot of advice and assistance from the OED. In 1995 I spent ten weeks in the OED Department, working on the South African vocabulary and leaving notes for future editing. Little did I imagine then that in 1998, just after Christmas, my family and I would take the huge step of moving to England, when I was appointed to the OED revision project as Deputy Chief Editor. In 2001 I became Director of the OED department, and Director, Editorial Projects in 2005. Women are also taking a leading role in the non-editorial work associated with the Dictionary. Yvonne Warburton is currently in charge of OED Online: I started work as a library researcher on Volume III of the Supplement in 1976, based in the Bodleian Library, checking quotations and searching for information and antedatings. Four years later I was moved in-house to learn how to draft entries, and eventually progressed to revising other peoples entries. As the Supplement drew to an end in the 1980s, I transferred to the ambitious project to rekey the OED into an electronic database, organizing an army of freelance proofreaders to check the data. After that, having learned about structured text, I helped produce the first OED on CD-ROM. When the revision project began, I did a spell running the Bibliography Group, but soon did another sideways move in the late 90s, when the concept of OED Online began to emerge. I now manage the online publication, an absorbing job that has taught me an immense amount, and has taken me all over the United States. More than I could have imagined when I saw that ad in the TLS back in 1976 and began work in the dusty library stacks; but I still retain a sneaking fondnesss for checking the odd Shakespeare quotation that comes my way Yvonnes army of freelance proofreaders included Veronica Hurst, now her successor as head of the Bibliography Group: I saw an advertisement in the University Gazette in the early 1980s, inviting proofreaders to apply to
Rosfrith Murray
The December 2005 OED Online update includes several words first attested exactly one hundred years ago, such as period adj., personalist, petrol pump, pewter-making, phacoid, and phagocyte. Words entering the language two hundred years ago, in 1805, include perfectionize, personifier, pessulus, and phaenogamous.
Several words first attested in 1705, three hundred years ago, feature in the December update of OED Online: peripety, pesade, and pesting. Words with histories beginning four hundred years ago include Pharsalian, petticoat-monger, phantic, Pharaoh's rat, perishless, periwig v., and perplexedness.
DECEMBER 2005
OED News
This is also the case with other groups of the population who have been under-represented in the past, and it is an ongoing aim of the OED revision to be as fair a representation of the whole community of English-speakers as we can possibly be.
Meraud Grant Ferguson, Senior Assistant Editor, OED, and Jemma Best, Senior Assistant Editor, OED
Just as the increase in the number of women working for the Dictionary has followed the increase in women in the workplace in general, the quotations in the OED reflect society. The OED seeks to represent usage, rather than be prescriptive about what should or should not be the case. Therefore, if more women write and are published, more women will be quoted.
Words and phrases covered in the December 2005 OED Online update could help you to... ... permit a perma-tanned Peter Pan to perform... persuade a philandering perjuror to persist... ... perplex a persnickety perfumier peskily... pester a petulant pew renter perniciously...
OED News
Balderdash and Piffle
There have been lights and cameras in the OED Department recently: the London production company, Takeaway Media, has been filming for the forthcoming BBC2 series on words called Balderdash and Piffle. This series, made in collaboration with the OED, is to be broadcast in January and February 2006. Each of the six programmes will be based upon one letter of the alphabet, and will explore evidence gathered by the publicevidence resulting from the Wordhunt
DECEMBER 2005
launched by the BBC in June, in which the OED asked for help with fifty words. Each programme will also include a short film on an aspect of OED work. See http://www.oed.com/bbcwordhunt/ or http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/wordhunt/ for moreincluding a list of the fifty words.
Penny Silva, Director, Editorial Projects, OED
Appeals
Words or phrases which appear on the Appeals List are those currently being drafted or revised for the OED for which the documentary evidence is incomplete. Often these are slang or colloquial items which cannot be researched in specialist texts and are most likely to be found by a general reader in non-specialized or popular literature. Usually the appeal is for an earlier example than our current earliest (e.g. antedate 1970 for a word for which our earliest example comes from 1970), but sometimes the appeal is for an interdating where there is a large gap in the OEDs quotation evidence (e.g. interdate 15891910). Occasionally we ask for a postdating (e.g. post-date 1875), if an editor feels that an item being revised is still current but has failed to find any recent examples through the usual avenues of research. Please note: it is generally safe to assume that examples found by searching the Web, using search engines such as Google, will have already been considered by OED editors. cwtch (n.: Welsh English, a cupboard or cubby-hole, a hiding place) antedate 1973 with non-glossarial evidence cwtch (n.: Welsh English, a cuddle, a hug) antedate 1992 cwtch (v.: Welsh English, to hug) antedate 1965 doobrey (n.: a thingummy) antedate 1984 portcullis (v.: to furnish with a portcullis; to close with or as with a portcullis) interdate 17731932 potch (v.: to slap, smack) post-date 1973 pot ear (n.: a pot handle) interdate ?c14751952 potentacy (n.: the state or rule of a potentate; supreme power) interdate 17151916 poutish (adj.: somewhat pouting) interdate 17251913 praemunire facias (n.: a writ charging a sheriff to summon a person accused of asserting or maintaining papal jurisdiction in England) interdate c14751929 prairie chicken (n.: a newcomer) antedate 1911, or postdate 1976 prairie skirt (n.: a long, full skirt with a gathered waist) antedate 1965 prat (n.: an idiot, a fool) interdate a15421968 prat digger (n.: a pickpocket) any non-glossarial evidence prat digging (n.: the action of stealing from a hip pocket) post-date 1927 Please send submissions to oed3@oup.com
Interesting antedatings
Revision of the entries in the December 2005 OED Online update has revealed an earlier origin than previously known for many words, including: perforating (adjective, antedated from 1661 to 1578) petrifier (from 1891 to 1794) phalaris (from 1911 to 1548) Pharisaism (from 1610 to ?1573) pharmacist (from 1834 to 1721) Phidian (from 1809 to a1650)
www.oed.com
DECEMBER 2005
OED News
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