The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary | 
| Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 63841
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 019517500X
Dewey Decimal Number: 423.09
EAN: 9780195175004
ASIN: 019517500X
Publication Date: October 14, 2004
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Product 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 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 Two books by Winchester on the OED: Which one to pick May 16, 2008
The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was a huge project, far larger than I would have suspected. It took decades to prepare and used several thousand volunteers. Its leaders were men of varying abilities and eccentricities and Simon Winchester captures all of this in The Meaning of Everything. However, this book is written in a more formal language style than are some of Winchester's other books, making it a little less fun to read. This is one of the two books that Winchester has written about the creation of the OED, the other being The Professor and the Madman. The Meaning of Everything takes a more global perspective of the OED's creation, offering a greater explanation of this undertaking. The Professor and the Madman looks at the life of one unique, prolific contributor to the OED and is therefore more interesting and fun to read. If you are not interested enough in dictionaries to buy both books, then I recommend The Professor and the Madman. But this book was not as good as the other in explaining how the OED was developed, so be prepared to not understand everything. If you are sufficiently interested, or you want to have a thorough look at the development of the OED, then read The Meaning of Everything first. It doesn't reveal any information that would make The Professor and the Madman less fun to read.
 Quality Control April 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the last week I read two books about "everything": Everything and More", by David Wallace, and "The Meaning of Everything", by Simon Winchester. They couldn't be more different. Wallace's book, an attempt to explain the mathematics of infinity, is an farrago of cutesy, folksy footnotes, so unintelligible it would have appalled Asimov, Gamow, Sagan, and other science writers who have tried sincerely to make mathematics comprehensible to the layman; Winchester's book, a 150-year history of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, is lucid and fascinating, easy to read and understand. And even fun.
I give it only 4 stars because dictionary history is not everyone's meat; but Winchester has made it delightful in the right way: not focussing only on the amusing sidelines, but telling the story with all its parts (even the salacious ones) in due perspective where we can enjoy them without having the great project trivialized for us.
Dull? No, dramatic! There are villains: wheedling little Practical Publishers, wielding the almighty Pound, who demand the work be reduced in scale if it is ever to see print. And heroes: mighty lexicographers with heavy, hard, sharp pens, determined never to let them have a bit of it. In the end, they win; and the OED becomes the one, single, exhaustive dictionary ever produced.
A recent business buzz-term is "quality engineering"; this book can show modern American businessmen just what it takes to get there: a century of expensive intransigence.
 The Triumph of English April 4, 2008
The English language is now, and has been for some time, the world's language. This may grate with the Francophones of the world but it is, nevertheless, an indisputable fact.
Perhaps the greatest strength of English is that it is constantly evolving. New words and expressions come and go at a rate of knots. There is no equivalent of the Academie Francaise monitoring matters and trying to guide the language is certain directions. English is wonderfully malleable.
Yet for all its flexibility, every modern language needs certain basic rules or understandings in order that we can communicate in some common manner. To a large extent, these "rules" were laid out by the creators of the Oxford English Dictionary. In this regard, the chief driving force was James Murray who supervised the dictionary's first edition.
Simon Winchester has done a terrific job in covering the history of Murray's efforts and the trials and tribulations of the dictionary's creation. I can appreciate that many might think that a book about a dictionary could be overly dry. Do not be concerned. The book is interesting, sometimes whimsical and always fascinating. To all lovers of the English language, read this book.
Language is what separates us from the beasts. December 2, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is fast paced and not at all pedantic. It is totally rewarding, although the stories of the men that contributed to and perpetuated this great undertaking will make you feel stupid, lazy, and unaccomplished. If you have the head of a philologist, or the heart of a logophile, or both, you will thoroughly enjoy this.
The madness continues. . . November 18, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Journalist Simon Winchester returns to the subject of his bestseller, The Professor and the Madman, to further expound on the making of the English language's definitive dictionary. The story begins with a lucid journey through the history of the English language, setting the foundation for a group of intellectuals in 1860, who decide to undertake the monumentous task of correcting the attempts of previous lexicographers. The project continues over the next 70 years, with an intriguing cast of colorful editors, publishers, and hundreds of volunteer readers who mailed in quotations from books on half-sheets of writing paper. The "slips" came in at the rate of 1,000 per day, sorted by assistants and even the children of one editor (to earn pocket money). Winchester's rich, dexterous prose details the daily workings of the project, providing personal accounts of key participants, including some of the volunteers: the "Madman," American soldier Dr. W. C. Minor, confined to a lunatic asylum for murder, and Fitzedward Hall, a self-taught philologist-turned-hermit in self-exile after a heated row with an academic rival.
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