The Word Detective: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary

by John Simpson

Overview

Can you drink a glass of balderdash? What do you call the part of a dog's back it can't scratch? And if, serendipitously, you find yourself in Serendip, then where exactly are you?

The answers to all of these questions — and a great many more — can be found in the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language. And there is no better guide to the dictionary's many wonderments than the former chief editor of the OED, John Simpson. Simpson spent almost four decades of his life immersed in the intricacies of our language, and guides us through its history with charmingly laconic wit. In The Word Detective, an intensely personal memoir and a joyful celebration of English, he weaves a story of how words come into being (and sometimes disappear), how culture shapes the language we use, and how technology has transformed not only the way we speak and write but also how words are made.

Throughout, he enlivens his narrative with lively excavations and investigations of individual words — from deadline to online and back to 101 (yes, it's a word) — all the while reminding us that the seemingly mundane words (can you name the four different meanings of ma?) are often the most interesting ones. But Simpson also reminds us of the limitations of language: spending his days in the OED's house of words, his family at home is forced to confront the challenges of wordlessness.

A brilliant and deeply humane expedition through the world of words, The Word Detective will delight and inspire any lover of language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541697218
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/17/2017
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	543,549
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

John Simpson is the former chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, where he helped digitize the dictionary. He lives in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Background to the Case

1. Serendipity, Perhaps

2. Lexicography 101

3. Marshallers of Words

4. The Longest Way Round

5. Uneasy Skanking

6. Shark-Infested Waters

7. OED Redux

8. The Tunnel and the Vision

9. Gxddbov Xxkxzt Pg Ifmk

10. At the Top of the Crazy Tree

11. Shenanigans Online

12. Flavour of the Month

13. Becoming the Past

Editorial Reviews

…The Word Detective is a charmingly full, frank and humorous account of a career dedicated to rigorous lexicographic rectitude…I doubt there has ever been a better account of how a person with a capacious brain sits down with a cup of tea and a pile of cards and sets about creating authoritative definitions. Throughout the text, Simpson inserts potted word biographies (apprenticeship, deadline, inkling) that illustrate both the complexity and the "excitement" of the work.

The New York Times Book Review - Lynne Truss

08/08/2016
Language lives and breathes, and nowhere is it examined so microscopically as at the offices of the Oxford English Dictionary. Former editor-in-chief Simpson peered through that microscope for more than 30 years, beginning in 1976, during the OED’s most dynamic period of growth. This is just the sort of memoir you’d imagine from the hands of someone who’s spent his life chasing down the peculiar history of words and writing clear and careful definitions of them and their origins: precise and thorough. A meticulous storyteller, Simpson chronicles his years at the OED from his very first assignment—reading a translation of Christian Metz’s Film Language searching for words used for the first time in English (he discovers prefilmic and screening room)—to his appointment as coeditor of the OED and his promotion to chief editor. Simpson gracefully weaves into his memoir little definitions of words, providing examples of the work of a lexicographer. For instance, the phrase hue and cry, he observes, likely arose from the French hu e cri, which was the “outcry from the aggrieved party calling for the pursuit of a felon,” though by the 17th century in English the word hue had faded from use and become a “fossil.” At the turn of the 21st century, Simpson oversees the publication of the online edition of the OED in order to make it easier to use and to “open up access to a wider readership.” Simpson’s vibrant and inspiring memoir gives us a glimpse into life as detective in the realm of words. Agent: David Kuhn & Becky Sweren, Kuhn Projects. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Providence Journal:
"Delightful...a fitting companion to Elisabeth Murray's Caught in the Web of Words and Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman...Simpson peppers the text of his book with page-long etymologies for everything from 'inkling' to 'balderdash' to 'selfie,' and with affecting touches of his personal and family history, all of which deepen and humanize this fascinating paean to lexicography."

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2016
Historically, words can mean many different things, but it takes careful research to document how that meaning has changed. Simpson, former chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), draws on his 37-year career to illustrate the OED's evolution and continued relevance as a source for understanding the English language. Beginning with his job interview, Simpson relates his experience, bringing readers into the basement archives of the OED, with its daily tea rituals, through the years that saw the move to computerization. The author shares his knowledge of lexicography and illustrates its complexity by interspersing words in bold throughout that are explored in asides. His discussion of the word "marriage" shows how social change affects its definition over time. Boldly, Simpson claims that people who love words are "the last people we need working on dictionaries" and admits to only a "modicum of enthusiasm" for the material. Stories about the author's family add an appealing personal framework. VERDICT This witty exploration of culture and language will be welcomed by users of the OED and anyone interested in the study of language. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," p. 26.]—Judy Solberg, Sacramento, CA

Library Journal

★ 2016-07-19
A witty memoir from a dictionary editor who insists he is not a “word lover.”Simpson, former chief editor of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, makes his literary debut with a delightful chronicle of his 40-year career among fellow lexicographers as the dictionary went through the long, painstaking processes of updating, revising, and digitizing its gargantuan number of entries. Unassuming, sly, and often very funny, the author paints an affectionate portrait of the rarefied culture of the OED when he joined the staff in 1976: an effort by the chief editor to incorporate the vocabulary of America’s police and CB truckers, for example, elicited “some eyebrows raised in the dictionary office (Oxford’s own code for utter disbelief, and right up there with the imperceptibly flaring nostrils).” Every afternoon, editors met for “dictionary tea-time,” a holdover from “the sedate environment” of the 19th century. Simpson’s talents—which he reveals with disarming modesty—as a word sleuth and project manager led to promotions along the way. He became chief editor during the OED’s adventuresome transition to the internet, a huge step for the staff and the dictionary’s overseer and funder, the University of Oxford Press. The author deftly characterizes the politics and personalities—including three administrators nicknamed the Admiral, the Shark, and the Colonel—who sometimes clashed, gently and decorously, during his career. In addition to chronicling the revision processes, Simpson offers lively histories for words that are quirky (inkling, juggernaut), trendy (selfie), seemingly self-evident (inferno, blueprint), and oddly problematic (same, bird-watching). Each history, Simpson says, reflects “a patterning in the language over the centuries that mirrors and comments on the emergence of peoples and nations in different eras.” The author reveals personal details, as well, especially the “sadness and helplessness” that he and his wife felt when they realized that their second daughter was afflicted with a profound developmental disability, unable to communicate with words. “Compared to this,” he writes, “the dictionary work was easy.” A captivating celebration of a life among words.

Kirkus Reviews