The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary

by Simon Winchester

book data

588 ratings, 3.89 average rating, 120 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		26%
4		43%
3		23%
2		5%
1		1%

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published

October 14th 2004 by Oxford University Press, USA

binding

Paperback, 288 pages

isbn

019517500X (isbn13: 9780195175004)

description

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 ...more

[close] 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. [close]

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12/17/07

Stephanie rated it:

(review of isbn 0198607024)

Read in December, 2007

I can't recommend this enough. Fascinating, humor-full and very readable. You wouldn't think this would be funny, but it is. I mean laugh-out-loud funny. Maybe I'm a complete nerd but this is fascinating and fun and full of things you don't need to know! The people who contributed to the dictionary are truly interesting. I loved hearing about word origins and how they fit into the dictionary -- I wish Winchester would write more on this topic. I've fallen in love with his writing style wh...more

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01/13/09

KC rated it:

(review of isbn 0198607024)

Read in January, 2009

More words on words as I return to the OED well. This is a biography of the dictionary, told by an English reporter. The breezy style almost turned me off at the beginning, as I felt Winchester was trying to hard to make the Old English roots of the language interesting. It isn’t to almost all but a select few. I think the challenges to describing and defining every word in the language appeals to wider audience. Or at least this one. At any rate, after a rough start the book hits its st...more

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05/28/09

Adam rated it:

bookshelves: history, language

Read in May, 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 fearing that a book about a dictionary would be monumentally boring. But if the book in question were "The Meaning of Everything," then one's intuitions would be wrong. For the OED is more than ju...more

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05/17/09

Bruce rated it:

Read in May, 2009

recommends it for: any of the OED curious who missed Winchester's earlier book or Lynda Mugglestone's

2 1/2 stars, really. There’s a reason I’ve taken at least a week to get to this summary. It’s been hard to bring myself to find something to say about it beyond a resounding ‘meh.’ It’s sad that this book hasn’t much to recommend itself as a standalone history of the Oxford English Dictionary or as a complement to Winchester’s earlier The Professor and the Madman, parts of which this book reuses and the whole of which it takes a short seven pages to recap. But then, this is a ...more 2 1/2 stars, really. There’s a reason I’ve taken at least a week to get to this summary. It’s been hard to bring myself to find something to say about it beyond a resounding ‘meh.’ It’s sad that this book hasn’t much to recommend itself as a standalone history of the Oxford English Dictionary or as a complement to Winchester’s earlier The Professor and the Madman, parts of which this book reuses and the whole of which it takes a short seven pages to recap. But then, this is a short book. I got the sense that Winchester’s heart just wasn’t in the writing, notwithstanding his clear admiration for the OED itself.

For example, the relationship between the Professor (the OED’s principal senior editor and this book’s protagonist, James Murray) and the vitally-contributing Madman (W.C. Minor, a paranoid schizophrenic institutionalized in England) is retold here as part of a chapter (One. Single. Chapter.) devoted to bringing to light the lives of important OED contributors, those whose names are cited somewhere in the Preface or acknowledgements pages. Minor’s tale follows a bit on Fitzedward Hall, another important early American contributor, albeit in his case a recluse lexicographer. So far, so good. Then the next half of the chapter then treats the histories of others who added to the OED a bit by skiffling through a table of apathetic highlights: “And there were many others besides,” Winchester yawns at page 201, “men and women who were in their own ways just as eccentric, their stories just as strange…,” though Winchester can’t be bothered to recount them. It’s possible his research efforts were frustrated by their obscurity. On page 213 the author italicizes in mild exasperation, “just who were these people?” Simon, you’ve written two books on this subject. Why are you asking me?

The Meaning of Everything begins and, save for the briefest of epilogues, largely ends with Oxford University’s celebration of the OED’s ongoing publication and the Queen’s dedication. However, this affair, yet more fully covered in Professor, takes place about 40 years before the OED itself has been completed and some 20-30 before the death of Murray. Kind of an odd choice for a book “telling the story” (not even “stories”?) of the OED’s origin and creation. Somewhere in the middle of a bit about Sir Murray’s struggles with a meddlesome Oxford don, I was briefly reminded of David McCullough’s far superior book about the Brooklyn Bridge. Both works cover the trials and tribulations that attended bringing Victorian era monuments of stunning ambition and authority to existence, both outlived their principal authors (Murray for the OED, John Roebling for the bridge), and had to be completed by others.

But then, the bridge placed lives at stake and McCullough cared to tell us about the lives of those involved, their biographies, their times. We had a stake in the story of the bridge’s ultimate success not least through those laboring in the sunken caissons, always a hairs’ breadth away from an underwater grave. The worst the OED ever managed was a headache and a slight squint. Possibly someone once threw a back out climbing a library ladder or suffered a series of nasty papercuts. Hardly much of an equivalent. Perhaps that helps explain why this book is so much shorter. But I doubt it.

The OED editors are hard at work on a third edition, all of which can be found online. There are other, better books out there on the book’s history and origins (including the aforementioned one by Winchester). For those curious about the contents of the OED and the uses of language, I’m now reading Ammon Shea’s fabulous book Reading the OED. (Briefly, it’s hysterical; I’m looking forward to jotting down a few cherce quotes.) At any rate, if the story of English compilers and language at all intrigues you, go read those better books. Let this passionless, inconsistent, and annoyingly incomplete account moulder on the shelves. (less)

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03/09/09

Lis rated it:

bookshelves: 2009-reads, non-fiction

Read in March, 2009

perhaps not the most exciting topic, but i found it interesting, probably because i can't even imagine life without a dictionary now. of course there's a limit to how riveting such a story can be. the most suspenseful moments involved publishers imposing deadlines; the most exciting twists involved old men dying. some years sped through while banquet menus were analyzed in detail. the project was unprecedented and an unbelievably huge task which involved so many people, and years, to scour throu...more

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11/29/08

Deanna rated it:

Simon Winchester reads his own book in this surprisingly gripping tale of Victorian England and the quest to pin down the English language through the creation of the OED. The most striking thing about this book is its insight into a time when there were many men, really a whole class in America and England, who could devote their whole lives to study and learning -- because of their wealth and position in society. This project would be impossible today because this class of society no longer ...more

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06/08/09

Lee rated it:

Read in May, 2009

Entertaining details of the creation of the 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 was generated.

For years I've wanted a full, 20-volume 1989 Second Edition (the most recent version in physical print). This book increases that desire: deeply affective in-house advertisi...more

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06/02/08

Alli rated it:

bookshelves: mademethinkandponder, mytopbooks, non-fiction

Read in September, 2003

A must read for any sassy sesquipedalian

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09/21/08

CD rated it:

(review of isbn 0198607024)

bookshelves: biography, history, philosophy

Read in March, 2009

A wild ride of word play from Derby Day 1928 to 75 years in the past to a quick turn and back to the present. Winchester's skill are on full display as he tells the story of the most important work of its kind to ever be produced.

The OED for philologically inclined Anglophiles is the bible of all holy things written. Winchester gives the creation fair due and his style settles into a predictable and tight style worthy of the imposed discipline applied by the most influential of the...more

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09/14/08

Trevor rated it:

In 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. The other protagonist that Winchester alludes to is James Murray – the man, more than anyone else, responsible for the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary.

This book has only one pr...more

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04/18/08

Alex rated it:

(review of isbn 0060592389)

bookshelves: books-on-cd

Read in April, 2008

Ok, here's a fun experiment. Imagine that you and everyone you work with is given the job of writing a dictionary. And not just any dictionary: the most comprehensive dictionary ever, chronicling the history of the English language from the earliest known material through the present. Where would you begin? How would you divide up the work? How to organize the massive amount of quotations, the etymologies, the pronunciations? How to write the definitions, separating and numbering each of t...more

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02/18/08

Tiffany rated it:

(review of isbn 0198607024)

bookshelves: booksaboutbooks, read2008

Read in November, 2008

"Dictionaries that record and catalogue the language thus cannot ever be 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 great dictionary was...not 'to form, but to register' the language [1755].
"The approach that Johnson took was not to decide for himself what words meant, not...to prescribe how they should b...more

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09/02/07

Shoshanapnw rated it:

bookshelves: 2007, language, natural-history, writing

A pleasing history of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary by the author of the related The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, q.v. It used to be that one could get a copy of the Compact OED by joining a book club, and used copies were easy to find as well. When I went to college, I schlepped my Compact OED to school, home, and to school again each year. I still enjoy reading dictionaries (whether monolingual or translati...more

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04/05/09

Bookczuk rated it:

bookshelves: bookcrossing, home-library

I loved "The Professor and the Madman" but never completed "Map that Changed the World". (It still languishes on our shelves). Every time I hear Simon Winchester speak (ie on Booknotes etc), I am absolutely fascinated by him.

It took me a while to work through this. Professor and the Madman is still my favorite Winchester, though this moves into second place. I love the description of the meeting of great minds early on to celebrate the completion of the OE...more

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01/02/08

Sara rated it:

bookshelves: history, nonfiction

Read in April, 2007

recommends it for: nerds, the language-obsessed

Simon Winchester knows how to make a dry subject interesting. In the case of this history of the Oxford English Dictionary, he makes it fascinating.

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's relating this story while sipping single malt scotch and reclining before a fire.

Winchester's trademark is his frequent use of footnotes, these are almost always more than one senten...more

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03/08/09

Holly rated it:

Read in February, 2009

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. What a remarkable achievement--the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary--was chronicled here by Simon Winchester. I had never before wondered how the dictionary came to be and it was so interesting to me. I should be using some very cool dictionary words here, but you'll be saturated with them if you read this book.

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06/27/09

Rebekah rated it:

Read in June, 2009

I may be a nerd but this was really an interesting book... It makes you appreciate the grandeur of the English language and the massive project and sacrifice that attempting to catalog the whole thing was for so many people. If you like language, especially the English language, or have ever read a dictionary for fun, you must read this book.

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02/10/09

Dave rated it:

Very entertaining and interesting book about a dictionary that took 44 years to produce. We own the Canadian Oxford, so I do have a personal connection which may bias my view of this review. But I think I am on solid ground saying this author has a knack for dredging up cool anecdotes.

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09/20/08

Mary rated it:

bookshelves: books-i-own

Read in September, 2008

This fairly slim volume packs in tons of information about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, a massive undertaking begun in the 1850s and the first edition of which was finally finished in 1928. As a word nerd, I really enjoyed this history of my favorite dictionary. I gained a new appreciation for why the revisions on the 3rd edition have been going on for so long. Winchester's love for words also comes through in his prose, riddled as it is with words like "gallimaufry,"...more

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03/03/09

Marjorie rated it:

Read in January, 2008

Good read! So interesting to hear about how this was done before computer technology and all the drama that went along with it. I listened to it on CD but it was engaging enough that I'm SURE it would be good to read to yourself, too.

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