How a group of dissatisfied intellectuals built the world's most famous dictionary
In 1857, a small London group decided existing dictionaries were simply not good enough. What began as a mission to fix errors in word dates and coverage evolved into a massive, decades-long undertaking that would eventually reshape how we understand the history of the English language.
The project was not born at Oxford, but within the Philological Society in London. Driven by leaders like Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, the group sought to address seven specific failures in contemporary dictionaries, including incorrect dates for word usage and the omission of obsolete meanings. What started as a search for 'unregistered words' quickly expanded into a monumental historical project.
The scale of the undertaking was staggering. Under the editorship of James Murray, the project utilized a massive network of over 800 volunteers. These readers scoured texts to provide quotation slips, which were organized in a 'Scriptorium'—a corrugated iron outbuilding lined with 1,029 pigeon-holes. By 1880, the collection had swelled to approximately 2,500,000 slips. The work even involved unexpected contributors, such as W. C. Minor, a Yale-trained surgeon working from a mental hospital, who used a unique tracking system to submit data.
The dictionary's publication was a slow, iterative process. The first fascicle appeared in 1884, and the full dictionary was not released in bound volumes until 1928. The project's history is marked by both triumph and struggle, from the early death of editor Herbert Coleridge to the intense pressure from Oxford University Press to control costs. Today, the OED has transitioned from massive 20-volume print editions to a digital-first existence, with the third edition expected to be exclusively electronic.
The OED's methodology changed lexicography. Unlike predecessors that used limited sources, OED editors prioritized large groups of short quotations from a wide variety of authors. This approach allows the dictionary to trace the life span of a word, from its earliest recorded sense to its eventual disappearance from common use.
Source: Oxford English Dictionary
