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Harmless Drudgery

The document discusses the author's purchase of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary (SOED) containing 600,000 words from 1700-2007. It then provides background on the origins of dictionaries, glossaries, and the earliest known word lists dating back to ancient Babylon. It highlights Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language as the most important dictionary until the Oxford English Dictionary was published over a century later. Johnson is also quoted describing lexicographers as "harmless drudges."

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Mordechai Schiller
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99 views2 pages

Harmless Drudgery

The document discusses the author's purchase of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary (SOED) containing 600,000 words from 1700-2007. It then provides background on the origins of dictionaries, glossaries, and the earliest known word lists dating back to ancient Babylon. It highlights Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language as the most important dictionary until the Oxford English Dictionary was published over a century later. Johnson is also quoted describing lexicographers as "harmless drudges."

Uploaded by

Mordechai Schiller
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Harmless Drudgery

hamodia.com /features/harmless-drudgery/

By Mordechai Schiller

Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 4:13 pm | ' "

I bought myself a present. Guess what.

Good guess. But not the one you think. I dont have room for the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. Besides,
it costs over a grand.

(Evan Morris, aka The Word Detective, wrote that the word grand for $1,000 dates to 1915, from underworld slang
along with C-note for $100, from the Roman numeral C. In 1915, a thousand dollars was a princely sum, far
more than the average working stiff would ever possess at one time. So it made sense to pay tribute to such an
impressive sum with the word grand, and the name stuck.)

The last print edition (1989) of the Oxford English Dictionary was respectfully dedicated to Her Majesty the Queen
by her gracious permission. However, theres no truth to the myth that the national anthem G-d Save the Queen
originated from her attempting to read the entire OED.

I bought myself the Shorter Oxford Dictionary (SOED). It only includes words current in general English from 1700
to 2007 600,000 of them. The two hefty volumes have a shipping weight of 14 pounds. Compare that to my
handy-dandy New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) a welterweight contender at seven pounds.

(I looked up the shipping weight because I dont have a postage scale. And if I put anything on my bathroom scale
under 250 pounds, it says Put both feet on the scale. Some people might call them coffee-table books, but I dont
have a coffee table. I dont need one. To me, every table is a coffee table. Ive left coffee stains on mahogany,
marble, glass and Formica.)

My bookcase groaned when I put the volumes on the shelf. So now they dominate my desk. When my
granddaughter Leah Rochi saw the imposing tomes, she said, What do you need those for, Zeidy? Youre so smart;
you dont need a dictionary!

Arent grandchildren wonderful? She should only know. Thats like telling a cabby, Youre such a good driver; you
dont need a car!

If people think Im smart, its only because I follow the advice of the lexicographers lexicographer, Samuel Johnson:
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

I can look it up.

When I was a kid, the first dictionary I read (yes, I used to read it) was my parents Websters Universal Unabridged
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Dictionary, with its beautiful cream-filigree-cover. I dont know where it wound up. The only books I salvaged from
those days are the Harper & Bros. (almost) Complete Mark Twain.

***

But what is a dictionary? And how did it get that name?

According to Oxford Dictionaries, the Latin dictio means a word, but thats not how dictionaries got their name.
Oxford traces it to John of Garland, in 13th-Century England. He wrote a childrens textbook for Latin composition.
He called it Dictionary, explaining that he is thinking of dictio not so much in its sense word but in its sense
connected speech, because by using his guide the learner will be able to put words together to form connected
speech.

But word books started way before that. In You Can Look it Up: The Reference Shelf From Ancient Babylon to
Wikipedia, lexicographer Jack Lynch wrote that dictionaries likely started with just lists of words. Then came the
glossary an alphabetical list of terms or words found in or relating to a specific subject, text, or dialect, with
explanations (NOAD).

Glossaries are standard equipment in specialized fields, or for immigrant students who need to make sense of
English words. (Some of the sentences resulting from relying on glossaries read as if the student picked words by
putting on a blindfold and sticking a pin in Rogets Thesaurus.)

The first surviving glossary goes by the clumsy name of Urra = hubullu, compiled sometime in the second
millennium B.C.E. (The title is sometimes presented, even more clumsily but more precisely, as UR5-RA = hubullu
or HAR-ra = hubullu.)

Its a long way from there to Samuel Johnson (who didnt write the first dictionary. Lynch called that legend pure
mythology).

But theres good reason for the myth. The second half of the 18th century in English literature is called The Age of
Johnson, but he is most famous for his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. Lynch called it far and away the
most important dictionary the dictionary until the Oxford English Dictionary appeared a century and a half later.

The scholars of the OED stood on the gigantic shoulders of Johnson who created his magnum opus almost
single-handedly. And, as an added bonus, his dictionary is full of wit, e.g., Lexicographer: A writer of dictionaries; a
harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

Dictionaries are like watches, Johnson wrote in 1784. The worst is better than none, and the best cannot be
expected to go quite true.

Please send smiles, sticks and stones to [email protected].

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