The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
by Simon Winchester
260pp, Oxford, £12.99

In 1858 the members of the Philological Society decided that work
should begin on a "New Dictionary of the English Language". Seventy
years and more than £300,000 later, A New English Dictionary on
Historical Principles - what we now know as the OED - was first
published in its entirety. Simon Winchester, whose popular book The
Surgeon of Crowthorne told the odd story of the murderer who, from his
cell in Broadmoor, contributed thousands of illustrative quotations to
the dictionary, now offers a brief account of the whole enterprise.

He first sprints through the development of language in Britain and
sketches the development of monolingual lexicography, from Robert
Cawdrey's 1604 dictionary which advertised itself as being "for the
benefit of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons", to
Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster.
Then we come to the story of the OED itself and its early editors:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's grandson Herbert, brilliant but sickly,
whose dying words were, according to legend, "I must begin Sanskrit
tomorrow"; and Frederick Furnivall, who recruited pretty young women
from Hammersmith cafés to induct them into his sculling club.

Work on the dictionary was at best sporadic; finally, in 1879,
red-bearded Scotsman James Murray was appointed editor and became the
hero of the story. We see him erect his first Scriptorium - a
corrugated-iron shed in his garden - to house his assistants, and to
shelve the hundreds of thousands of quotation slips sent in by
volunteers. He battles against interfering superiors and moves to
Oxford, where the local post office erects a shiny new red pillar box
right outside his house to handle the volume of correspondence.
Winchester explains well the enormous labours involved in compiling
even four pages, and his notion of the OED as a triumph of Victorian
engineering is apposite.

According to the lovably irascible Murray, the poet Browning used
words "without regard to their proper meaning". Worryingly, so does
Winchester. He tells us that the Shakespearean word "vastidity" means
"big". (As the OED itself confirms, it means the quality of being very
big, or "vastness".) He declaims grandiloquently that the OED "...
quite literally, would be classically democratic". (It was, of course,
not "literally" democratic, since the editor had absolute power in
writing the final definitions.)

Winchester is besotted with ungrammatical constructions - which defect
seems allied to his peculiar strivings for genteel archaism, as when
he calls a year a "twelvemonth", or refers to a short rest as a
"period of quietude". He is also in love with hyperbole (he refers to
a group of dining academics as "a stellar gathering of intellect,
rarely either assembled or able to be assembled since"). Most gruesome
of all are Winchester's attempts at pseudo-novelistic colour. People
at a ball in 1928 apparently "whirled like stately dervishes". This is
popular history that, though it is published by the august Oxford
University Press itself, feels no need even to pay lip-service to
"historical principles".

· Steven Poole's Trigger Happy is published by Fourth Estate.


Taiwan, 2005


OED的故事
人類史上最浩大的編纂工程

‧作者：賽門‧溫契斯特Simon Winchester
‧譯者：:林秀梅
‧定價:320元／頁數:280頁／

【基本資料 ｜序曲｜書摘 1｜書摘 2 】


OED的故事
人類史上最浩大的編纂工程


【基本資料｜序曲 ｜書摘 1 ｜書摘 2 】



入圍2004年「大英圖書獎」歷史類書籍

溫契斯特有一流作家必備的華麗筆觸，我一口氣讀完《OED的故事：人類史上最浩大的編纂工程》，欲罷不能。──哈洛‧卜倫（HaroldBloom），耶魯大學英國文學教授

一九二八年，耗時七十一年的《牛津英語大辭典》（簡稱OED）的出版，奠定英語不可撼動的世界地位，這部辭典在當時堪稱人類有史以來最龐大的知識庫。不僅彙集成千上萬有名、無名男女的智慧結晶，還增添了許多奇聞軼事。

十九世紀中葉，英國有錢有閒的維多利亞知識份子組成的「語文學會」，有感於合乎時代需求的英語辭典付之闕如，興起為英語編纂一部最完備辭典的念頭。幾經更迭，這部命運多舛的辭典差點胎死腹中，幸虧每遇危機，總有人伸出援手，扶它一把。直到沒沒無名的蘇格蘭布商之子自告奮勇扛下編纂實務，帶領「繕寫房」的編輯成員與世界各角落英語、非英語國家的閱讀義工與學者，胼手胝足、一磚一瓦堆砌出這空前的遠大志業。

幕後的點點滴滴，有險惡，有勾心鬥角，有執著，有編輯與出版社的鬥智，也有來自各行各業不改初衷的無私奉獻。還在查辭典的諸君，不說你們可能不知道：早期編輯之一就是詩人柯立芝那患肺癆的孫子；aardvark（食蟻獸）差點進不了牛津英語殿堂，因為不像英文字；《柳林中的風聲》主角水鼠竟是以這本辭典歷任編輯之一為藍本；《魔戒》作者托爾金為walrus（海象）一詞下定義時吃盡苦頭；還有bondmaid（女奴）成了OED第一版的遺珠之憾，只因一紙詞條遺落在書堆之後。

作者溫契斯特調閱牛津大學出版社檔案，嚴謹地把這些幕後編輯的趣聞與英語詞彙的編纂過程一一呈現。不論現在還有多少人每天查字典、為什麼查，這本巨型辭典編輯之繁複，創造了跨越兩個世紀、長達七十一年的傳奇。而這部傳奇，將隨著語言的生命，像漣漪般一圈一圈向外擴展，也將隨著人類編纂辭典的本能，一代一代流傳下去。

▼ 作者簡介

賽門‧溫契斯特Simon Winchester

作家、探險家。牛津大學地質系畢業後，擔任《衛報》（

Guardian）及《星期泰晤士報》（Sunday
Times）的海外特派員，待過貝爾發斯特、新德里、紐約、倫敦及香港。為《紐約時報》、《史密森月刊》（Smithsonian）、《觀察者》（Spectator）、《國家地理雜誌》、BBC等媒體撰稿。一九九八年全球暢銷書《瘋子‧教授‧大字典》（The
Surgeon of Crowthorne），描述英格蘭精神療養院的殺人犯──美國軍醫麥諾，為OED查索引句，與主編莫雷結下一段不解之緣，共同為這本龐大的辭典寫下一段少為人知的傳奇，這段插曲在《OED的故事》中也有所著墨。其他著作有《一九○六年加州大地震》（A
Crack in the Edge of the World）、《克拉卡托亞火山爆發記》（Krakatoa）、《改變世界的地圖》（The
Map That Changed the World），以及《世界中央的河流》（The River at the Center of the
World）、《大英帝國邊境》（Outposts）等多本遊記。目前正在進行有關中國的長篇寫作計畫。


▼ 譯者簡介

林秀梅

台灣大學外文系碩士。譯有《新動物園》、《雄性暴力》、《可笑的結局》（合譯）、《法國土司》。


▼ 目錄

序曲 Prologue

1 測量規模1. Taking the Measure of it All
2 分類與架構 2. The Construction of the Pigeonholes
3 指揮大局 3. The General Officer Commanding
4 蜂擁而回的詞彙大軍4. Battling the Undertow
5 穿越文字密林 5. Pushing through the Untrodden Forest
6 緩如牛步 6. So Heavily Goes the Chariot
7 隱士、殺人犯與形形色色的辭典義工 7. The Hermit and the Murderer - and Hereward
Thimble by Price
8 光榮告別8. From Take to Turndown - and then, Triumphal Valediction
尾聲／恆常復始 Epilogue: And Always Beginning Again
書目與延伸閱讀Bibliography and Further Reading
Index
Picture Acknowledgements
謝詞

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	萬物之要義―《牛津英語詞典》編纂記（簡體書）
	I S B N：710005754X I S B N 13：9787100057547 作 者：[英]溫徹斯特 精平裝/頁數： 平裝本 / 283頁 出版社：商務印書館國際有限公司 出版日： 2009/03/01

牛津系列英語學習詞典被譽為“全世界擁有最多讀者的英文詞典”。本書以倒敘的方式，從《牛津英語詞典》首版問世的1928年來切入整個編纂事件的描述。描 述了《牛津英語詞典》的編纂者們為界定大千世界物質與精神萬物的要義為付出的艱辛努力，讓我們領略了英語語言濫觴於西元前500年到繁盛於當今21世紀的 時代變遷中蘊積的無窮人文魅力。可以說是真正意義上的《牛津英語詞典》編纂史，是立足於這一宏大歷史事件而進行的全面深刻的揭示，不僅使人增長知識，而且 還給人以無限啟迪。是值得廣大英語愛好者和研究者一讀的有關英語語言史，特別是辭彙史方面的有價值的參考書。