Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Meaning of Everything CD : The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary

The Meaning of Everything CD : The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
reviewed on + 29 more book reviews


Very good. Light entertainment. It is not as good as Professor and the Madman, also written by Simon Winchester. The author in a later chapter recounts the Professor and the madman story, so if you want only to read or listen to one, then listen or read this one.

A case study on how a dictionary progressed from novelity words to serious study. Projects like wikipedia are not new. This 70 plus year endevor was crowdsourced before the internet and modern computers. It is interesting how they did it. It did take a long time for the OED to finish it task of catologing all the words used in the english language. It is a work that never ends because english is constantly changing.