Preface

Most people think of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as a distinctly British product. Begun in England one hundred and fifty years ago, it took more than sixty years to complete, and when it was finally finished the British Prime Minister heralded it as a ‘national treasure’. It maintained this image throughout the twentieth century, and in 2006 the English public voted it an ‘Icon of England’, alongside marmite, Buckingham Palace, and the bowler hat. Central to the rhetoric of OED-as-national-treasure is the collection of eccentric lexicographers who devoted their lives to the giant text. We have inherited the picture of a handful of devoted Englishmen huddled in a cold, damp Scriptorium on Banbury Road, Oxford, wrapping their legs in newspaper to keep warm. Scholars and the media never fail to focus on the nineteenth-century editor of the OED, James Murray (1837–1915), who laboured on the dictionary for nearly forty years and died on the letter T without knowing whether the whole dictionary would ever be finished. We are presented with a story of uncompromising persistence and dedication to produce a multi-volume dictionary of unrivalled scholarly rigour which future generations would hail as the definitive record of the English language.

All of this is true, except for the bit about the OED being a distinctly English product. The making of this dictionary was a transnational effort, and if you look closely at its pages you discover a distinctly international dimension. Not only were some members of the small band of Englishmen in the Scriptorium actually Scottish, not English, but they were supported by hundreds of men and women from around the world. The OED text was created by the work of hundreds of contributors worldwide. It is a distinctly global product, in a sense the original Wikipedia, coordinated by Royal Mail. What’s more, Murray intended it to be so.