The original version of the Oxford English Dictionary is composed of 15,487 pages parceled into ten volumes containing the history of more unusual words than even William F. Buckley Jr. could ever use. From 1884 to 1928, the contents of the O.E.D. had accreted with the steady persistence of stalactites. The aim was to list all the "common words" in written English from about the time of Alfred the Great, together with illustrations of their usages through the centuries.
The steady drip of words continued through wars and economic disasters. Staff members and volunteer readers came and went, the synaptic gutters of their brains clogged with obscure references; their eyes failed; their arteries hardened. It is not known where, when or by whom the last word in the O.E.D.'s last entry was written. But then, cathedrals of language, like medieval churches, subordinate the personalities of their builders. Besides, neither is ever really finished. In 1933 the O.E.D. was reissued in twelve volumes plus a supplement. Last year the volumes were reproduced "micrographically" (photographically shrunk) into two volumes and marketed for $75, accompanied by a magnifying glass.
Still to Come. The word micrography does not yet appear in the O.E.D. But the history of that word will be available in the very near future. For Oxford has just released its newest updated volume (A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. I, 1,331 pages; $50). Volume I goes only from A through G. Volume II, H through P, and Volume III, Q through Z, are expected within the next five years. When the supplement is completed, it will have more than 50,000 words and 1.5 million quotations selected at times to entertain as well as inform. Under butterfly, for example, Queen Elizabeth II is listed as having said, "I always have butterflies when I open Parliament."
The project so far has taken 15 years. Supplement Editor R.W. Burchfield, a native of New Zealand and a teacher at St. Peter's College, Oxford, has had nearly 100 reader-scribes scouring fiction, nonfiction, newspapers and scientific journals from all over the English-speaking world in search of references to their assigned words. Some of the readers worked for nothing, while most freelanced for about $1 an hour. The oldest was a cleric in his 90s who is also listed as a contributor to the first O.E.D. The most prolific was a British book reviewer, Marghanita Laski, who supplied more than 100,000 usage illustrations.
Certainly one of the greatest cultural anticlimaxes of modern times is the O.E.D.'s already much publicized decision to include all those dirty four-letter words. "We did not hold back," says Burchfield. "Various expressions and circumlocutions for sexual, excretory and menstrual functions are all treated at appropriate length."