Neil Fein's Blog

The Meaning of Everything
by Simon Winchester

"The circle of the English language has a well-defined centre, but no discernible cicumference."
James Murray, Introduction to the Oxford English Dictionary

In 1998, Simon Winchester wrote a book on one of the Oxford English Dictionary's most prolific contributors, Dr. W.C. Minor: The Professor and the Madman. Afterwards, an editor at the Oxford University Press suggested that, "...since in that story, I had written what was essentially a footnote to history, would I now care to try writing the history itself?"

The Oxford English Dictionary started as a 71-year project that a well-heeled society of etymologists set in motion at Oxford University, encompassing what was at the time the entire known English language. Headwords^[1] were to be accompanied by their derivations; an exhaustive set of definitions of all possible shades of meaning; and, the heart of the dictionary, illustrative quotations.

Mr. Winchester has taken to the not unaudacious task of writing this surprisingly brief history with a combined enthusiasm and breadth of vision that has become his trademark. While this is perhaps the most focused of his books, it benefits greatly from a distinct lack of focus. The dictionary would likely not have been undertaken in an earlier or later British society, and the "dictionary craze" that was overtaking much of Europe and the US is a case in point. The lexicographical efforts of Johnson and Webster, well-read tomes in of the 19th century, are less relevant, in this age of TiVo and iPods, than they were in a day of literate sensationalism.

The book's chief flaw lies in the author's obvious love for his subject, the very impulse that also has allowed Mr. Winchester to produce some of his best prose to date. In the later chapters, detailing the end of the project and its progress to the present day, the respectful, almost awed tone becomes a series of evangelical paragraphs. But this is a small thing, as all of the book--including this slight excursion of trumpeting the unsung heroes of etymology--is the delightful, concise tale of a very human endeavor, and will appeal to those with any interest whatever in language or communication.

^[1] Headword: The word, in a dictionary entry, that is being defined or illustrated.