Dictionary with 2515 pages

This is a heavy, Shorter Oxford English dictionary, comprising 2515 pages, published in 1937. The Oxford is regarded by many as the world’s leading authority on English words. (1)

When I was young, my grandfather gave me one of these.  I was probably aged about 11 or 12, about the age he was when he’d had to leave school.  Maybe he’d had a win on the races, because it must have cost him a lot.  It was the best thing he ever gave me.

At first, I thought the Oxford dictionary must have had every word in the English language.  I don’t think I ever aspired to learn them all, but wow! Imagine! I could look up ANY word, and I didn’t have to go to the library…I could do it at home!

I soon discovered that it wasn’t quite true.  Sure, it had “bastard” and “bugger”, for example.  But no “fuck”.  Still, it was fantastic!

In 2019, work had been underway for years at Oxford University Press on a new edition of the dictionary. (2)

To many people, though, all the painstaking scholarly research that goes into making the the Oxford has been superseded in the computer age by the convenience of free online dictionaries.

Computerisation even brought word-processing software programs with built-in “spell check” systems so one couldn’t, or shouldn’t, make spelling mistakes.  But, amazingly, still people did!

Unless I knew for sure that that a job application came from a new migrant struggling to learn English, if one came before me with spelling mistakes, it wouldn’t survive more than a few seconds before being binned.

“Use spell check you idiot,” I’d mutter under my breath.

In the early 2000s, the Campaign Against Poor Spelling in English (CAPSIE) was formed, but it soon broke up into splinter groups.

One faction had argued in favour of the all-pervasive American spellings, another that only British spellings were correct, because after all, that’s where English originated.

I once had to borrow a marker pen from a shop-assistant at London’s Heathrow airport to draw in an extra “M” on a metre-high sign advertising “accomodation”.

The shop assistant was puzzled. Maybe she’d never heard of spell check and thought I was a graffitist, but she didn’t call security to have me arrested.

(1) https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/the-meaning-of-everything-the-history-of-the-oxford-english-dictionary/

(2) https://public.oed.com/history/

About Author