DOCSLIB.ORG

Fowlers Modern English Usage PDF Book

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Fowlers Modern English Usage PDF Book FOWLERS MODERN ENGLISH USAGE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK R.W. Burchfield | 896 pages | 01 May 2005 | Oxford University Press | 9780198610212 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom Fowlers Modern English Usage PDF Book These entries are sensible and modern, and will be the most useful part of the book for most readers. He is remarkably noncritical of the double negative "I don't want no trouble" , concluding, "the use of double or cumulative negation for emphasis is taken to be a certain indication of poor education and of linguistic deficit. The two words were for a long time interchangeable. The new longer essays are also informative and valuable; those on suffixes added to proper names Kafka esque , Dicken sian and on "proper terms" collective names for animals such as a herd of cattle, an exaltation of larks, a trip of widgeon are particularly welcome. Onions and G. As in Fowler, the majority of the entries are not concerned with usage conflicts per se; they list pronunciations, advise on correct or at least usual spellings, define uncommon words and differentiate similar pairs, give plurals, place accents. There are occasional examples of exclusively American issues, such as the expression of a "not that difficult of a problem". Homo is called "an informal abbreviation of homosexual ," but the potential offensiveness is not mentioned. Prescriptive books sell by tapping into our fear of seeming ignorant; few people will -- or should -- accept an argument that between you and I is standard English, as one scholarly journal proposed recently. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. About impact as a verb, while recommending avoiding it, he feels that "it is very likely that it will pass into uncontested standard use as time goes on. The reason that this sense of the word is now generally acceptable is the reason that usage guides need to be revised. Search Start Search. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Views Read Edit View history. Choose your country or region Close. Henry Watson Fowler worked as a teacher and freelance writer before going to Guernsey to form a remarkably successful writing partnership with his brother Francis. For the Alabama department store, see Belk Hudson Lofts. His distinguished lexicographical career included a number of key publications: The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology , with C. Friedrichsen and The English Language Prescriptivism is based on the argument that there is a way of using the language that is better -- clearer, more precise, more elegant, more etymologically faithful. Download as PDF Printable version. Burchfield is generally insensitive to the use of "politically correct" language, a subject of great importance in American discourse. We want to hear what you think about this article. Latest Issue Past Issues. This is as it should be, for Fowler, with all its authentic interest and appeal, is now a period piece, to be read and enjoyed for what it is. Available online as part of Oxford Reference - cross-search quality A-Z reference at the click of a button. The second edition, titled Fowler's Modern English Usage , was published in , revised and edited by Ernest Gowers. If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code. The quotations, many from very recent sources, are indispensable, and come from a much broader range of publications than the unsourced newspaper quotations that represent the bulk of Fowler's citations. Of amoral moral is a Latin derivative Fowler, typically, wrote, " amoral. The new edition — the first in 18 years — has been thoroughly but sensitively revised to reflect English usage in the 21st century, and offers a clear, authoritative, and enlightening picture of the English we use today. Robert Burchfield was born in Wangannui, New Zealand. Those who still want their Fowler must acquire an original. On clever he writes, "Fowler wrote a splendidly prejudiced piece about the misuse of clever , 'especially in feminine conversation'. Unlike Fowler, Burchfield pays attention to American English. On the reason is because , after citing the expression in various writers "of good standing" including Pepys, Wycherly, Pope, Frost, Wodehouse, Hemingway, and Faulkner, Burchfield writes, "Its absence from the works of our most talented writers and scholars is more significant than its presence in more informal printed work. Cancel Save. Any of a score of his major articles on grammar shows clearly his deficiencies in this field. William Safire has remarked that "Fowler wrote the Bible on usage, but Modern English Usage needs revision every generation to stay modern. Fowler's gives comprehensive and practical advice on complex points of grammar, syntax, punctuation, style, and word choice. Most notably, under black Burchfield writes, "A minor curiosity is that African-Americans frequently use the word nigger without giving offence when addressing other blacks. Fowlers Modern English Usage Writer It can be ordered now for delivery when back in stock. For many years he worked in senior editorial positions in Collins Dictionaries. Download as PDF Printable version. Onions and G. Homo is called "an informal abbreviation of homosexual ," but the potential offensiveness is not mentioned. To purchase, visit your preferred ebook provider. The Complete Plain Words has itself become a classic, with its insistence on clear and direct prose and its own vigorous writing propelling the book through three editions; it remains in print. These entries are sensible and modern, and will be the most useful part of the book for most readers. In the entries "Pedantic Humour" and "Polysyllabic Humour" Fowler mocked the use of arcane words archaisms and the use of unnecessarily long words. Fowler's gives comprehensive and practical advice on complex points of grammar, syntax, punctuation, style, and word choice. For many years he worked in senior editorial positions in Collins Dictionaries. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique , distinctions among like words homonyms and synonyms , and the use of foreign terms, the dictionary became the standard for other style guides to writing in English. Also of Interest. Harsh dismissal of disliked usages and pronunciations is not uncommon. Why literally shouldn't be taken literally. The controversy over words like gyp "to cheat" , Oriental "Asian" , and guy "a person [of either sex]" is not discussed though this use of guy is mentioned. Fowler's name stands for "usage" as much as Webster's stands for "dictionary" and Roget's for "thesaurus": Modern English Usage went on to become the most famous and highly regarded usage book ever published. He has rewritten every entry in the book, in his own voice, referring to himself as "I" or "me. Why literally shouldn't be taken literally. As a global organization, we, like many others, recognize the significant threat posed by the coronavirus. Jeremy Butterfield is an author, language expert, writer, and lexicographer. But despite this welcome attention to Americanisms, Burchfield remains focused on British English. Archived from the original on 7 April We want to hear what you think about this article. Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata CS1 errors: empty unknown parameters. His distinguished lexicographical career included a number of key publications: The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology , with C. The new longer essays are also informative and valuable; those on suffixes added to proper names Kafka esque , Dicken sian and on "proper terms" collective names for animals such as a herd of cattle, an exaltation of larks, a trip of widgeon are particularly welcome. It has been clear for some time that Modern English Usage is in serious need of revision; the current standard usage of educated people has moved beyond many of Fowler's pronouncements. On clever he writes, "Fowler wrote a splendidly prejudiced piece about the misuse of clever , 'especially in feminine conversation'. Burchfield also brings the principles of historical lexicography to bear on the book. The thousands of authentic examples in the book vividly demonstr. At its best, descriptivism embraces prescriptivism, since a descriptive study should examine the prescriptive commentary that precedes it. We ought never to sit down at our typewriters without one. Why Americans think home in on something is a mistake and Brits think hone in is. Our distribution centers are open and orders can be placed online. There are occasional examples of exclusively American issues, such as the expression of a "not that difficult of a problem". For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs , and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us. Hence, the first edition remains in print, along with the second edition, edited by Ernest Gowers , which was reprinted in and Gowers was best known for The Complete Plain Words , a combined version of two earlier books he had written, at the request of the Treasury Department, to help combat the ponderous jargon of officialese. He has little patience for "militant feminists" in his essays on -ess , man , -person , and sexist language , preferring things to go along as they once did, and finding "depressing," even quoting a correspondent "nauseating," the use of sex-neutral elements in traditional phrases and contexts. Fowlers Modern English Usage Reviews Worse, some prescriptivists are the very stereotype of ruler-thwacking English teachers -- so vehement and inflexible about their rules that anyone who breaks them is branded vulgar, illiterate, or worse. But Gowers's hand was light, and he let Fowler's advice stand without comment even when he disagreed with it. Of graduate he writes that there is "no problem about its ordinary intransitive sense he graduated from Yale in ," although this has indeed been a problem for American usage critics, some of whom still feel that only an institution, not a person, can graduate, thus demanding the form he was graduated from Yale.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Words of the World: a Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary
    DOWNLOAD CSS Notes, Books, MCQs, Magazines www.thecsspoint.com Download CSS Notes Download CSS Books Download CSS Magazines Download CSS MCQs Download CSS Past Papers The CSS Point, Pakistan’s The Best Online FREE Web source for All CSS Aspirants. Email: [email protected] BUY CSS / PMS / NTS & GENERAL KNOWLEDGE BOOKS ONLINE CASH ON DELIVERY ALL OVER PAKISTAN Visit Now: WWW.CSSBOOKS.NET For Oder & Inquiry Call/SMS/WhatsApp 0333 6042057 – 0726 540316 Words of the World Most people think of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as a distinctly British product. Begun in England 150 years ago, it took more than 60 years to complete, and when it was finally finished in 1928, the British prime minister heralded it as a ‘national treasure’. It maintained this image throughout the twentieth century, and in 2006 the English public voted it an ‘Icon of England’, alongside Marmite, Buckingham Palace, and the bowler hat. But this book shows that the dictionary is not as ‘British’ as we all thought. The linguist and lexicographer, Sarah Ogilvie, combines her insider knowledge and experience with impeccable research to show that the OED is in fact an international product in both its content and its making. She examines the policies and practices of the various editors, applies qualitative and quantitative analysis, and finds new OED archival materials in the form of letters, reports, and proofs. She demonstrates that the OED,in its use of readers from all over the world and its coverage of World English, is in fact a global text. sarah ogilvie is Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, Reader in Linguistics at the Australian National University, and Chief Editor of Oxford Dictionaries, Australia.
    [Show full text]
  • Published in the Clarity Journal 62
    Clarity Number 62 November 2009 In this issue The Hon. Nathan Rees, MP Journal of the Opening address 5 international association Dr. Robert Eagleson Ensnaring perceptions on communication: promoting plain legal language Underlying obstacles to lawyers writing plainly 9 Wessel Visser The credit crisis has its roots in Main Street, not Wall Street 14 William Lutz Plain language and financial transparency: What you don’t understand can cost (or make) you money 16 Lynda Harris Making the business case for plain English 19 Ernest Gowers (Ann Scott) Plain words 22 Ben Piper Righting the wrongs of rewriting 30 Pam Peters Keynote address International trends in English style and usage 34 Candice Burt Laws set the framework for plain language in South Africa 41 Angela Colter Assessing the usability of credit card disclosures 46 Caroline Lindberg Developing plain language multilingual information about the law 53 The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG Closing address Plain concord: Clarity’s ten commandments 58 Clarity and general news How to join Clarity 15 Call for special papers 15 Thanks to Richard Woof 18 Guest editor for this issue: Coming conferences 21 Neil James Phil Knight retires from Clarity committee 33 Member news 65 Editor in chief: From the President 66 Julie Clement Members by country 67 Patrons The Rt Hon Sir Christopher Staughton, The Honorable Michael Kirby, and H E Judge Kenneth Keith Founder John Walton Committee President: Christopher Balmford ([email protected]) Members: Country Representatives plus Simon Adamyk, Mark Adler, Michèle Asprey, Peter Butt, Sir Edward Caldwell, Richard Castle, Annetta Cheek, Julie Clement, Robert Eagleson, Jenny Gracie, Philip Knight, Robert Lowe, John Pare, Daphne Perry, John Walton, Richard Woof.
    [Show full text]
  • The Relationship of the Home Office and the Ministry Of
    THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE HOME OFFICE AND THE MINISTRY OF LABOUR WITH THE TREASURY ESTABLISHMENT DIVISION 1919-1946 AN EVALUATION OF CONTRASTING NEEDS NORMAN GEORGE PRICE Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD London School of Economics (University of London) 1 UMI Number: U042642 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U042642 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 t h e s e s F 68 nu-oaaiS ABSTRACT The thesis examines three Departments of the British Home Civil Service from 1919 to 1946: the Home Office, the Ministry of Labour and the Treasury Establishment Division. The study investigates the contrasting needs, in establishment terms, of an old "Secretary of State" department the Home Office, performing a largely regulatory role, with a new department the Ministry of Labour performing an administrative role, and the relationship of both over establishment matters with the Treasury. The study assesses the roles of individual Administrative Class civil servants in the three departments from the rank of Principal to Permanent Secretary: with particular reference to the relationships existing between the Permanent Secretaries of the two departments and the Permanent Secretaries of the Treasury and their Controllers of Establishments.
    [Show full text]
  • A Victorian Curate: a Study of the Life and Career of the Rev. Dr John Hunt
    D A Victorian Curate A Study of the Life and Career of the Rev. Dr John Hunt DAVID YEANDLE AVID The Rev. Dr John Hunt (1827-1907) was not a typical clergyman in the Victorian Church of England. He was Sco� sh, of lowly birth, and lacking both social Y ICTORIAN URATE EANDLE A V C connec� ons and private means. He was also a wi� y and fl uent intellectual, whose publica� ons stood alongside the most eminent of his peers during a period when theology was being redefi ned in the light of Darwin’s Origin of Species and other radical scien� fi c advances. Hunt a� racted notoriety and confl ict as well as admira� on and respect: he was A V the subject of ar� cles in Punch and in the wider press concerning his clandes� ne dissec� on of a foetus in the crypt of a City church, while his Essay on Pantheism was proscribed by the Roman Catholic Church. He had many skirmishes with incumbents, both evangelical and catholic, and was dismissed from several of his curacies. ICTORIAN This book analyses his career in London and St Ives (Cambs.) through the lens of his autobiographical narra� ve, Clergymen Made Scarce (1867). David Yeandle has examined a li� le-known copy of the text that includes manuscript annota� ons by Eliza Hunt, the wife of the author, which off er unique insight into the many C anonymous and pseudonymous references in the text. URATE A Victorian Curate: A Study of the Life and Career of the Rev.
    [Show full text]
  • Download (15Mb)
    University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/67105 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. Never To Be Disclosed: Government Secrecy in Britain 1945 - 1975 by Christopher R. Moran BA, MA A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History University of Warwick, Department of History September 2008 CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Docwadoo v Abbrenaaons vii Introduction INever to Be Disclosed 1 Chapter 11The Official Secrets Act: Genesis and Evolution 21 1.1 1850- 1889 22 1.21890-1920 35 Conclusions 43 Chapter 21A Silent Service: The Culture of Civil Service Secrecy 45 2.1Anonymity and Neutrality 50 2.2Security Routines 55 2.3"The Official Secrets Act Affects You!" 71 2.4 Raising the Curtain? 75 Conclusions 91 Chapter 31 Harry 'Chapman' Pincher: Sleuthing the Secret State 93 3.11945-1964 97 3.2The D-Notice Affair 107 3.31967-1975 124 Conclusions 132 Chapter 41The Riddle of the Frogman: The Crabb Affair, Secrecy and Cold War Culture 135 4.1 Disappearance 138 4.2 Conspiracy and Popular Culture 144 4.3Operation Claret 149 4.4 Backwash 156 Conclusions 159 Chapter 51Light in Dark Comers: Intelligence Memoirs and Official History
    [Show full text]
  • Adventuring in Dictionaries: New Studies in the History of Lexicography John Considine
    Adventuring in Dictionaries: New Studies in the History of Lexicography Edited by John Considine Adventuring in Dictionaries: New Studies in the History of Lexicography, Edited by John Considine This book first published 2010 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2010 by John Considine and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2576-X, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2576-4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................ ix The History of Lexicography John Considine Chapter One................................................................................................. 1 “For the Better Understanding of the Order of This Dictionarie, Peruse the Preface to the Reader”: Topics in the Outside Matter of French and English Dictionaries (1580–1673) Heberto Fernandez and Monique C. Cormier Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 14 Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall (1604) Reconsidered: Its Driving Force for Early English Lexicography Kusujiro Miyoshi Chapter Three ...........................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • © Copyright 2012 Lindsay Rose Russell
    © Copyright 2012 Lindsay Rose Russell WOMEN IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DICTIONARY Lindsay Rose Russell a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2012 Reading Committee: Anis Bawarshi, Co-Chair Colette Moore, Co-Chair Candice Rai Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of English University of Washington Abstract Women in the English Language Dictionary Lindsay Rose Russell Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Anis Bawarshi and Associate Professor Colette Moore Department of English “Women in the English Language Dictionary,” is at once a historical account and rhetorical analysis of how women have been involved in the English dictionary from its bilingual beginnings in the early modern period to its present-day array of instantiations. Departing from well-worn accounts of the English dictionary as a series of more-or-less discrete texts created by more-or-less famous men to constitute a near-neutral record of the entire language, “Women in the English Language Dictionary” conceives, instead, of the English language dictionary as a rhetorical genre, the form, content, audience, exigence, and cultural consequences of which are gendered and gendering. As a focused analysis of the emergence and evolution of a genre, “Women in the English Language Dictionary” finds that women—as an abstract construction and as a social collectivity—were integral for the framing of early dictionaries’ exigencies and for the fashioning of audiences invoked by the genre. Women signal major shifts in the genre’s purposes and participants, shifts heretofore neglected in favor of generic phases delimited by changes in form and content.
    [Show full text]
  • From Abominable to Zealous
    ENGLISH From Abominable to Zealous A comparison of British usage guides th from the early 20 century till today Måns Jonsson Supervisor: Larisa Gustafsson Oldireva BA thesis Examiner: Spring 2014 Joe Trotta Title: From Abominable to Zealous: A comparison of British usage guides from the early 20th century till today. Author: Måns Jonsson Supervisor: Larisa Gustafsson Oldireva Abstract: The aim of this study is to examine the views on linguistic phenomena which have been criticised during the past century. The material used is six British usage guides published between 1906 and 2010 in which five controversial points of usage are selected for study. They are: between you and I (instead of me), split infinitives, the placement of only in a sentence, singular none, and different(ly) to/than (instead of from). The attitudes to these phenomena are analysed and compared. The analysis is focused on the language used by the authors and descriptive and prescriptive elements displayed in the guides. The results show that although there are differences between the usage guides, there is no clearly distinct trend in diachronic changes of attitudes within the studied period. However, some points of usage are approached with uniform attitudes by all the guides. The character of descriptive discourse does not seem to change in one direction across the century under study, but observable contrasts in recent discussions on the controversial issues of usage point to the possibility of a new wave of prescriptivism. Keywords: Usage guides, stigmatised language, diachronic change, prescriptivism, descriptivism, linguistic prestige, attitudes to correctness. Table of contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Notes and Comments
    Notes and Comments In these notes, books and articles are mentioned by their titles and the names of authors (or editors). For details of the publisher, year and place of publication, see the list of References, beginning on page 283. Chapter 1: English – The Working Tongue of the Global Village Many of the references in this and the following chapters draw on the following sources: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language by David Crystal and The Oxford Companion to the English Language edited by Tom McArthur. We have also made use of books for the general reader, such as: The Story of English by Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil; Mother Tongue: The English Language by Bill Bryson; and The Adventure of English: the Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg. General works on English language (not particularly historical) are English in Use by Randolph Quirk and Gabriele Stein and A Survey of Modern English by Stephen Gramley and Kurt-Michael Patzold. A lively introduction is provided by David Crystal’s The English Language. p. 1 Marshal McLuhan introduced the expression ‘global village’ in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. p. 2 Braj Kachru explained his ‘three circles’ diagram in ‘Standards, codification and socio- linguistic realism: the English language in the outer circle’ (p. 12) and it has appeared in print many times since. p. 3 Estimates for the number of speakers in Inner Circle countries are based on David Crystal’s English as a Global Language (pp. 62–5) and have been updated by him for this second edition of our book.
    [Show full text]
  • The Development of Standards of English
    The Development of Standards of English Raymond Hickey English Linguistics Campus Essen John Walker (1732-1807) Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788) Robert Lowth (1710-1787) Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English in 18th century Britain The rise of prescriptivism and the development of the standard of English in 18th-century Britain: Dictionaries, grammars and works on elocution (the art of public speaking, later of accepted pronunciation) appeared in the second half of the 18th century. They were intended to fix the public usage of English. Some of these works are shown in the following table and more information on four of the major authors is given below. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer and lexicographer. Johnson was a major critic and scholar who was known both for his brilliant conversation and the quality of his writing. As a man of letters his influence on literature inhis day and later periods was considerable. His significance for linguistics lies in the fact that he compiled the first major monolingual dictionary of English, his Dictionary of the English language (1755),which was a model for all future lexicographers. The legacy of Samuel Johnson Johnson’s dictionary became the standard work of English lexicography because of its range, objectivity and use of quotations from major authors to back up definitions given. It was not until over a century later that it was superseded by the dictionary which was to become the Oxford English Dictionary. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles A proposal was made by Richard Trench in 1857 to the Philological Society to design a new dictionary which would serve as a definitive work on the vocabulary of English with complete historical coverage.
    [Show full text]
  • Ernest Gowers and the ‘Loan Collection’ Cohort: Civil Service Responses to Crises and Austerity in the 20Th Century
    ERNEST GOWERS AND THE ‘LOAN COLLECTION’ COHORT: CIVIL SERVICE RESPONSES TO CRISES AND AUSTERITY IN THE 20TH CENTURY INTRODUCTION1 Addressing the annual Civil Service dinner in 1925, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said: Unlike Cabinet Ministers who have their fame entombed in rows of bulging biographies, the great Civil Servants often hardly attain to the humble dignity of a footnote to history. A Civil Servant does good by stealth and would blush to find it fame; a Cabinet Minister does good by publicity and would resign if he failed to secure it! It is easy to decide which is the more indispensable to a nation’s welfare. The country easily survives the frequent changes of ministries; it hardly moved a muscle when a Labour Government climbed for a moment to office; but it would receive a staggering blow if the Civil Service suddenly took it into its head to resign tomorrow. Some Governments are in office but not in power; the Civil Service is always in office and always in power.2 Twenty-five years later, Edward Bridges gave a lecture about the Civil Service entitled ‘Portrait of a Profession: The Civil Service Tradition’, in which he provided an overview of the stages through which the Civil Service had developed since the Northcote-Trevelyan Report: the introduction of central recruitment through the open, competitive entry examination; the establishment of the ‘Loan Collection’ which for the first time drew staff together from a range of departments to manage a particular major project; the establishment of a number of new departments during the First World War; and, finally, the transfer of senior staff between departments.3 This prompted a storm of controversy about the Civil Service, fuelled in an article by political economist Thomas Balogh.
    [Show full text]
  • Front Matter
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-02183-9 - Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary Sarah Ogilvie Frontmatter More information Words of the World Most people think of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as a distinctly British product. Begun in England 150 years ago, it took more than 60 years to complete, and when it was finally finished in 1928, the British prime minister heralded it as a ‘national treasure’. It maintained this image throughout the twentieth century, and in 2006 the English public voted it an ‘Icon of England’, alongside Marmite, Buckingham Palace, and the bowler hat. But this book shows that the dictionary is not as ‘British’ as we all thought. The linguist and lexicographer, Sarah Ogilvie, combines her insider knowledge and experience with impeccable research to show that the OED is in fact an international product in both its content and its making. She examines the policies and practices of the various editors, applies qualitative and quantitative analysis, and finds new OED archival materials in the form of letters, reports, and proofs. She demonstrates that the OED,in its use of readers from all over the world and its coverage of World English, is in fact a global text. sarah ogilvie is Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, Reader in Linguistics at the Australian National University, and Chief Editor of Oxford Dictionaries, Australia. Prior to that she was Alice Tong Sze Research Fellow at Cambridge University. She holds a doctorate in Linguistics from the University of Oxford and worked for many years as an editor on the Oxford English Dictionary in England and the Macquarie and Oxford dictionaries in Australia.
    [Show full text]