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102 reviews for:
The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester
3.78 AVERAGE
102 reviews for:
The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester
3.78 AVERAGE
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death, Death
This was pretty decent, although a bit breathless and pretty much unapologetically colonialist. God save the Queen and Rule Brittania and ::cough cough::.
informative
fast-paced
funny
informative
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
Well this one went downhill.
I recommend this book at all solely for its first chapter giving a succinct and entertaining essay on the history of the English language, that's what hooked me into it. I suggest you read that and then put the book back on the store/library shelf. It's not worth taking home.
This book is kind of a sham. The back cover blurb mentions how this book covers such interesting tidbits such as 'bondmaid' being accidentally left out of the first edition, and how words like monkey and marzipan gave the writers so much trouble--but, get this--that's all the book says.
When Winchester reaches that part of the book, he essentially says: "'bondmaid' got left out of the first edition because its slips were lost and forgotten about" and moves on. OK, I got that from the back cover, dude. I've been under the impression that back-cover teasers were supposed to be, you know, teasers.
This book has loads of bits like that, its not so much a history as a collection of anecdotes. Winchester puts in little facts about the major players involved, Furnivall was a womanizer, Murray's kids were overachievers, some other guy liked to swim nude. Nothing really adds up the way it should.
Winchester makes a lot of inferences and statements like "this is what happened, but this is what I like to think is what happened." For instance, referencing the humor that was sometimes put into the dictionary, he points out a definition written by Murray in the 1890s for abbreviator: "An officer of the court of Rome, appointed...to draw up the Pope's briefs." Oh my, how droll. Except Winchester mentions that 'briefs' did not become a term for underwear until 1933. Winchester concedes that nothing untoward was intended, but he "like[s] to wonder." That's not your job, man.
I learned a lot about the making of the O.E.D., yes, but Winchester either didn't have enough proper information or he felt he had to cut it down to the bone to make it marketable--which is ironic considering that this is about one of the most noncommercial of achievements. He's written a whole other book on this subject, focusing on an inmate of an insane asylum who contributed something like 12,000 plus quotations to the dictionary, who had a brief (oh that word again, IT CAN MEAN UNDERWEAR HOHO HAHA) mention in this book. But there are scores of names that he mentions, but doesn't bother to follow up on other than saying little information is readily available. In keeping with his example, I like to think he was just too lazy to follow through on his research.
I recommend this book at all solely for its first chapter giving a succinct and entertaining essay on the history of the English language, that's what hooked me into it. I suggest you read that and then put the book back on the store/library shelf. It's not worth taking home.
This book is kind of a sham. The back cover blurb mentions how this book covers such interesting tidbits such as 'bondmaid' being accidentally left out of the first edition, and how words like monkey and marzipan gave the writers so much trouble--but, get this--that's all the book says.
When Winchester reaches that part of the book, he essentially says: "'bondmaid' got left out of the first edition because its slips were lost and forgotten about" and moves on. OK, I got that from the back cover, dude. I've been under the impression that back-cover teasers were supposed to be, you know, teasers.
This book has loads of bits like that, its not so much a history as a collection of anecdotes. Winchester puts in little facts about the major players involved, Furnivall was a womanizer, Murray's kids were overachievers, some other guy liked to swim nude. Nothing really adds up the way it should.
Winchester makes a lot of inferences and statements like "this is what happened, but this is what I like to think is what happened." For instance, referencing the humor that was sometimes put into the dictionary, he points out a definition written by Murray in the 1890s for abbreviator: "An officer of the court of Rome, appointed...to draw up the Pope's briefs." Oh my, how droll. Except Winchester mentions that 'briefs' did not become a term for underwear until 1933. Winchester concedes that nothing untoward was intended, but he "like[s] to wonder." That's not your job, man.
I learned a lot about the making of the O.E.D., yes, but Winchester either didn't have enough proper information or he felt he had to cut it down to the bone to make it marketable--which is ironic considering that this is about one of the most noncommercial of achievements. He's written a whole other book on this subject, focusing on an inmate of an insane asylum who contributed something like 12,000 plus quotations to the dictionary, who had a brief (oh that word again, IT CAN MEAN UNDERWEAR HOHO HAHA) mention in this book. But there are scores of names that he mentions, but doesn't bother to follow up on other than saying little information is readily available. In keeping with his example, I like to think he was just too lazy to follow through on his research.
A book that is worthy of a second read immediately. It's incredible to think of the amazing things that have come out of people working in garden sheds and other less than salubrious workplaces. Garden sheds have given us the original synthesizers, the oeuvres of Dahl, Shaw, Woolf, and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. And the Oxford English Dictionary. Compiled and created by a team of lexicographers over a period of 70 years. Collecting, gathering quotes for and defining over 400,000 words that appeared in English so far. No mean feat, affect has 18 meanings itself... and when was it first seen in literature. The quote collectors and volunteers included murderers, madmen in asylums, JRR Tolkien, many women, and people from around the world. Truely an incredible feat to record and not constrain a language. French and Italian have state sanctioned language rules, English is a freeform growing and open thing that gains new words from many many sources and we should be grateful for that openess.
A good book but not a great read after The Professor and the Madman since the author reuses a huge percentage of the content from the first book in this one. Each book is interesting on its own but not one right after the other.
It's harder sometimes to write clearly and plainly than to just jumble everything together in a gallimaufry* of words. The sentences in this book were stuffed to capacity with em dashes, semicolons, commas, and footnotes that not much care seems to have been taken with the prose at all. Some very amusing parts, but also a lot of waiting for the punchline to arrive.
*The author used the word gallimaufry twice in this 258-page book. Twice. I mean, settle down, dude.
*The author used the word gallimaufry twice in this 258-page book. Twice. I mean, settle down, dude.
Winchester is a master storyteller. He pulls facts that are little interesting gems to build up his overall story. He really brought the spirit of this work (the dictionary) alive, using words just outside of your knowledge and restating sentences using more obscure words. I enjoyed this book a lot. It is not often that I like something so much that I give it a five star, but I honestly couldn't wait to get in bed each night and read a little of the book.
Highly recommended!
Highly recommended!