false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182662310m/1309051.jpg 155396 9 From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary. Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language--"so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy"--and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor Herbert Coleridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making--how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient than anticipated--and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press. We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium--the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it--and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project--a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivalled uber-dictionary. 4621200 2003 The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary total:685|5:180|4:292|3:167|2:37|1:9| 685 2652 1248 128 5 1 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Dec 17 08:12:20 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 02 16:29:48 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jan 10 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 13 08:41:59 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 13 08:42:37 -0800 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Apr 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 22 10:56:32 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 22 10:56:59 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jul 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 22 06:15:26 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 22 06:16:10 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu May 28 10:53:34 -0700 2009 Thu May 28 10:59:19 -0700 2009 "It was 12 May 1860--and though most of those involved thought their work would come to fruition within the following decade, it was in fact to be 68 years and three weeks from that starting date before the great work finally saw the light of day."

One could be forgiven for fearin...more...]]> 2 2 false false Fri May 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun May 17 19:07:53 -0700 2009 Sun May 17 19:13:43 -0700 2009 Oxford English D...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Mar 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 09 12:38:47 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 18 09:13:30 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Nov 29 19:59:52 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 29 20:02:39 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon May 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 20:21:21 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 20:49:02 -0700 2009 OED. From the guy who brought you essentially the same book in The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but with less about that crazy American (Dr. Minor) and more of how the great work wa...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Mon Jun 02 01:08:32 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 02 01:09:51 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Mon Jul 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 08 15:28:21 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 20 15:35:58 -0700 2009 The Map that Changed the World. Both books very deftly placed these grand accomplishments in context with the historical period, social customs, and religious belief systems. Those crazy Victorians weren't perfect by a long stretch (class...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Mar 03 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Sep 21 22:21:35 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 07 14:43:36 -0800 2009
The OED for philologically inclined Anglophiles is the b...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Sep 14 04:36:06 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 14 04:37:00 -0700 2008 The Surgeon of Crawthorne, or The Professor and the Madman as it is more sensationally titled in the States, Winchester makes the point that the book has two protagonists. However, any fair reading of that book would have to say that really there is only one protagonist and that is Dr Minor. Th...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Apr 18 05:04:22 -0700 2008 Fri May 02 06:23:50 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Nov 17 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 18 22:43:03 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 01 16:45:59 -0800 2009 prescriptive; they must always be entirely descriptive, telling of the language as it is, not as it should be." (29)

"[Dictionary of the English Language creator Samuel Johnson's] aim in making the gr...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Sep 02 16:13:46 -0700 2007 Fri Jan 11 23:31:53 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Apr 05 14:51:41 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 05 14:53:01 -0700 2009

It took me a while to work through t...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jan 02 15:22:37 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 02 15:59:20 -0800 2008
He occasionally makes use of words you haven't heard since you last studied for the SATs, but at the same time makes you feel more like he...more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Feb 13 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Sep 27 19:11:34 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 27 19:16:17 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Aug 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 15:12:19 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 15:20:38 -0700 2009 The Professor & the Madman, I was looking forward to this one . . . and indeed, to being able to say I'd read "The Meaning of Everything" . . . and I have to say that it was interesting, but not as good as the former book, being a somewhat drier and more technical account ...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1309051