The Oxford English Dictionary and Other Historical Dictionaries

In November 1857, Richard Chenevix Trench, Dean of Westminster, presented two papers before the Philological Society under the title “On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries”. Dr Trench lists seven ways in which past dictionaries had been defective: their failure to include obsolete words, inconsistency in presenting families of words, shortcomings in describing historical development of words, neglecting synonymic differentiation, discrepancies in quoting illustrative material, a mixture of irrelevant and redundant information – mythological characters, encyclopedia articles.

The Philological Society decided that a new dictionary was needed and suggested an original title: “A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles”. The real beginning of the dictionary can be placed at 1879, when James A.H. Murray, a Scottish schoolmaster and an active member of the Philological Society, was persuaded to take over the editorship. At that time the dictionary was supposed to take ten years to complete; in fact, it would take fifty: the scope of the project was simply enormous. By the time of its completion the dictionary, published in fascicles from 1882 to 1928, numbered 15,487 pages, each of which contained three columns of type. Based on a file of 5 million citations, it printed 1,8 million. It includes more than 240.000 headwords and, counting subordinate words and combinations, contains about 450.000 entries.

Soon editorial board was expanded by adding Henry Bradley (1888), William Alexander Craigie and Charles Talbut Onions (1914).

The Oxford English dictionary is a monumental achievement, without parallel in the English language and in few others. We can’t imagine any contemporary lexicographer be without the OED which provides a solid base for any serious linguistic investigation, for the English tradition in lexicography, as opposed to the American, depended upon the educated generalist, the Oxford- or Cambridge-educated scholar, the ideal of the educated gentleman or woman of broad knowledge and exquisite taste. The volumes of the OED were published over a period of forty years, from 1888 to 1928; by the time the last volumes appeared the earliest needed revision, and a supplement was therefore issued in 1933 to record changes in the earlier volumes. But even the supplement was soon outdated.

In 1957 a New Zealand-born Oxonian scholar Robert W. Burchfield, was asked to edit a multivolume supplement. His task was to correct records, to add substandard words and vulgarisms and terminology of science, technology, etc.

Special attention was paid to variants of the language – American, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand. Four Supplementary volumes are of a quality commensurating with OED itself.

A “Dictionary of American English” in four volumes by William A. Craigie and James R. Hulbert including words revealing the cultural life of the American people, numerous etnorealia appeared as an effort to fill in the gaps in the OED coverage of Americanisms.

English traditional lexicography goes back to A Dictionary of the English Language by Dr. Samuel Johnson published in 1755 when the idea of a general national dictionary was in the air. The author tried to cover the maximum possible number of words’ meanings and lexical items supplying them with commentaries of stylistic and evaluatory character.

The Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1859-1933) became a great linguistic event as it aimed at including every word occurring in the literature of English by that time. Learner’s dictionaries occupy a specific place among other linguistic dictionaries for general use. For a detailed description they select that part of the vocabulary which is judged to be of value to its users. There dictionaries may be defined as general, synchronic and monolingual and their pedagogical orientation in illustrated by the Advanced Learner’s dictionary of Current English by A.S. Hornby which had an enormous impact on the English language teaching with its didactic effectiveness.

All contemporary learner’s dictionaries are characterized by simplicity of definitions, information on the grammar of words, their collocational characteristics and strategies of correct usage. In fact, they provide a key to language reality.

A reliable start for learners in dealing with the vocabulary at large is provided by a careful vocabulary selection which helped to single out a limited variety of items (based on their frequency and prominence in communication).

C.K. Ogden and IA. Richard’s Basic English contained 859 words, The General Service List of M. West – 2000 and the last edition of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary – 3500 words. Definitional value of words is the basic principle of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

The typology of dictionaries

Dictionaries may be classified according to various items:

I. According to the object of description

Encyclopaedic Linguistic

II. According to the number of words (volume)

Big academic Medial-sized Small dictionaries

dictionaries dictionaries (in one volume)

III. According to the language of description

Monolingual Bilingual Polyglot

IV. According to the functional variant of the language

General literary vocabulary bookish words

Technical vocabulary

Territorial variant

Social variant Slang

V. According to the main unit of description

Dictionaries of foreign words

Phraseological dictionaries

Dictionaries of collocations

Dictionaries of quatations

VI. According to what part of lexical units is described

orthoepic

orthographical

D. of frequency

D. of word formation

Rhyming dictionmary

VII. According to the order of units in it

alphabetical non-alphabetical

(thematic)

Classification of Dictionaries According to Their Contents

1. General language dictionaries are called so because they deal with the words of the language as a whole.

2. Encyclopaedic dictionaries have special entries for individual people and for places, they include supplementary features giving a wide range of general information like the names of the highest mountains and the famous lakes. The encyclopaedic dictionary is perhaps most popular with readers.

3. Translating (or international) dictionaries. This dictionary gives equivalent words in two or more languages, as opposed to the monolingual dictionary. Translating dictionaries do not define the words they list.

4. Monolingual linguistic dictionaries. Explanatory dictionaries.

5. Dialect and regional dictionaries are presented by:

- S. Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols. Oxford 1898-1905;

- N. Wentworth American Dialect dictionary. N Y, Crowell, 1944;

- M. A. Mathews, Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles. Chicago Univ. 1951;

- W. S. Avis, Toronto, Gage, 1967, A Dictionary of Canadianism on Historical Principles;

- S. B. Foreman, The New Zealand Contemporary Dictionary. Christchurch, Whitcombe, 1968.

6. Dictionaries of Slang:

- E. Partridge, Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. 2 vols. Lnd., Rout ledge;

- H. Wentworth and S.B. Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang. N. Y. Crowell, 1975.

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