All the Words

Simon Winchester's follow-up book to his bestselling, The Professor and the Madman, gives us the deep background information inside the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.  The Meaning of Everything is as much a story about the creation of shelving (designed to hold the millions of words and their definitions) as it is the editing itself.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was certainly the most comprehensive publishing endeavor ever attempted up to that point, and the years of its creation also took years off the lives of those who worked on it.

Here's a bit of light verse I wrote some years ago about the OED . . . .




The Oxford English Dictionary

Among the many books I've read
While at the beach or propped in bed
The dictionary stands alone
As the quintessential tome.
All other pages pale in scope
Or in importance in their hope
That one might find a perfect word
Or learn to spell it--though I've heard
That some rely on speller-checks
(Or say that Webster's hurts their necks).
And though the surfers disagree
I'll take the massive OED.
While surely not a breviary
At least it is a dictionary.