Uncovering unheard voices: the Oxford English Dictionary and beyond
Sarah Ogilvie, current Professor of Language and Lexicography in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at the University of Oxford, worked as an editor on the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and has written books on its history and making, including The Dictionary People: The unsung heroes who created the Oxford English Dictionary. This book provided the basis for her inspiring and stimulating METM26 keynote talk, a presentation entirely in keeping with the conference theme, namely Voices heard and unheard.
In 2014, towards the end of her employment with the OED, Ogilvie found three address books in the basement archive of Oxford University Press that had belonged to OED editor James Murray. Murray had recorded in them the names and addresses of volunteers who responded to public appeals in journals and newspapers by sending in slips of paper with quotations from books, showing how particular words were used in context. By 1880, the project had collected 2.5 million slips. From all the address books found, the names of some 3000 volunteer contributors were identified. While the books had been catalogued by the OUP archivists, they had apparently gone unexamined by researchers.
And so Professor Ogilvie was inspired to write up the stories of these ordinary members of the public who had responded to the invitation to contribute to the OED’s creation. She conducted research into the identities of the volunteer correspondents, which culminated in the publishing of The Dictionary People in 2023. Ogilvie’s presentation therefore emphasised how the entries in the OED’s first edition had been sourced from such a surprising and diverse group of people, leading her to describe it in her talk as “the Wikipedia of the nineteenth century”.
In sharing details about some of the most prolific contributors to the OED, Professor Ogilvie pointed out that a total of 161,000 slips had been provided by just one correspondent. Another delightfully amusing detail was of someone who devoted so much time to the preparation and research of slips for the OED editorial team that he eventually ended up in penury, and the poor man presented in person to the dictionary team in Oxford with a desperate plea for help!
Always enhanced by an appropriate image or photo, Professor Ogilvie’s selection of correspondents also included a mention of Karl Marx’s daughter and highlighted many different types of people, from astronomers to murderers, naturists, pornographers and suffragists. We learned too of just how much of an enterprise the OED is in reality – a single word alone may produce 42 pages of exposition! An astounding detail that may not be known to all its users.
With her palpable delight in sharing the stories and photos of contributors unearthed in her research, Professor Ogilvie won over the whole audience and received a well-deserved standing ovation at the conclusion – a very fitting outcome for an extremely stimulating talk. Professor Ogilvie’s discourse put the focus back on the very basis of our profession of translation and editing, namely on words, those words on slips sent to the OED by largely non-academic contributors. She also pointed out that a technology such as AI doesn’t underlie the OED, but rather the opposite: the OED is used to check the accuracy of AI output.
Although the professor was unable to join us in person in Perugia, she delivered what was in my view an outstanding and informative talk on one of the key reference works for speakers and learners of English.
This METM26 keynote was chronicled by Laurence Fogarty.
Photo credit: Robert Taylor