OED on CD-ROM



The history of the Oxford English Dictionary (continued)



A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, 1957-1986



Policy


Ian Hay?s First Hundred Thousand (1915) contains the observation that ?the Oxford
Dictionary of the English Language will have to be revised and enlarged when this war is
over?. This fact had not escaped the notice of the Dictionary?s editors, and they made
ironic use of the quotation as evidence for the use of the adverb when (sense 4b).

The Delegates of the University Press had taken the decision in the 1920s to produce a
Supplement which would concentrate on new vocabulary (embracing new words, new meanings
of existing words, collocations and combinations, phrases, etc.); as plans were laid for
the new Supplement in the 1950s to supersede the 1933 volume, it was again thought that
the scope of the work should be restricted primarily to neologisms, thus leaving open
the possibility of revising the main dictionary for the future.

Within this context, the principles by which entries for the new Supplement were
prepared were inherited in most particulars from the original dictionary: the selection
of material was based primarily upon a large quotation file collected as a result of
reading an extensive range of sources; the style of definition, along with the critical
apparatus (in the form of semantic and syntactic labelling, sense division, etc.) was
derived closely from that employed in the parent work. However, although it did concern
itself almost exclusively with additions to the language in the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, many antedatings of material in the OED had been collected in the
Dictionary?s files over the years, and it was decided that, since the work was intended
to update the historical record for the modern period in general, the new Supplement
should include as many as possible of those antedatings which related to this period
(for which 1820 was at first taken as the notional beginning, later 1750). Important
though these pre-datings were, they still represented only a small fraction of the
dictionary, which was primarily concerned with new lexical items.

The principal objective of the Supplement was to include all those standard words and
senses which were new to the language in Britain since the period of the Dictionary.
This objective was soon expanded to include as many of the standard terms from other
varieties of English (notably North American English) as could be identified by the
reading programme or by other resources. In the event, the broadening of the reading
programme to encompass a much greater proportion of the written English of North
America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and other regions than
had been the case for the OED itself had a profound effect upon the eventual coverage of
these areas which the Supplement was able to achieve. In earlier years, Sir William
Craigie had advocated the preparation of historical dictionaries treating specific
varieties of English around the world. Largely as a result of his pioneering work in
this field, a number of scholarly historical dictionaries, such as the Dictionary of
American English, the Scottish National Dictionary, and the Dictionary of Canadian
English, had been compiled, which assisted the preparation of the Supplement in two
ways. First, they provided additional (often very detailed) evidence for items selected
for the Supplement; secondly, their existence allowed the Supplement to omit many purely
local items, on the grounds that entering them would simply duplicate material that was
readily available elsewhere.

The standard vocabulary of British English was already well covered by the existing
Dictionary. As well as recent additions to this, and wider coverage of common terms from
the other varieties of English, much of the material prepared for the Supplement
consisted of the scientific, technical, slang, dialectal, and other words which had
passed into common use in the academic or technical fields, or in the social culture or
geographical area, to which they belonged. This simply extended the policy of the 1933
Supplement into the age of computing, space technology, popular music, and the other
areas of innovation and development by which the second and third quarters of the
twentieth century had been characterized. Furthermore, whereas the OED had included
nearly all the vocabulary, including hapax legomena, of important medieval and
Renaissance authors such as Chaucer, Gower, and Shakespeare, the Supplement followed the
more limited policy of presenting liberally, but not exhaustively, the occasional
vocabulary of a wide range of major modern authors.

There is sometimes opposition to the appearance in dictionaries of words which are
considered either generally offensive or opprobrious to a particular group. The
arguments run, on the one hand, that to allow such usages into a dictionary is
equivalent to sanctioning their use, and may even bring them to the notice of a wider
public than would otherwise have been the case; and on the other hand, that to exclude
such items would be tantamount to corrupting the historical record of the language, and
would represent the first stage in a process of regulating the dictionary to fit the
ethos of the times rather than the facts of the language. After very careful
consideration of the matter, it was decided to admit to the Supplement the sexually
taboo words formerly thought too gross and vulgar to be given countenance within the
covers of a dictionary. This was done long after such vocabulary had been admitted to
areas of general literature, and on the understanding that inclusion of these terms in a
scholarly dictionary did not necessarily free dictionary editors to add them to
dictionaries prepared for other audiences. Two of the most notorious of these terms
happened to fall in the alphabetical range covered by the first volume of the Supplement
(1972), where they appeared with a wide range of other colloquial and coarse expressions
referring to sexual and excretory functions.

A second major area which involved the treatment of potentially offensive vocabulary
concerned racial and religious terms. Consideration of this led to the formulation of
certain general lexicographical guidelines for the Supplement: namely, that (a)
offensiveness to a particular group was inadequate as the only ground for the exclusion
of any word or class of words from the OED; (b) it was therefore desirable to enter new
racial and religious terms however opprobrious they might seem to those to whom they
were applied and often to those who had to use them, or however controversial the set of
beliefs professed by the members of such groups; (c) it was also desirable, in order to
avoid misunderstanding and consequent hostility, that the antiquated historical records
of some words in this category already treated in the OED should be brought up to date.

Similarly, on the question of proprietary terminology, the Supplement endeavoured to
follow a policy which safeguarded scholarly standards while not doing anything to
imperil the proprietary rights of the owners of such terms. The proprietary status of
each term likely to fall into this category was investigated thoroughly in Patent Office
records in Britain and America, and elsewhere if this seemed to be necessary. If a term
was found to be proprietary this was stated in the definition, and the earliest
reference to the application or registration of the name in the official literature was
cited as one of the illustrative quotations in the completed entry. It was sometimes
found that a proprietary name had passed into general use: this fact was also related in
the entry.


The editorial process


A brief description of the various processes involved in the preparation of entries for
the first volume of the Supplement (1972) may be found on pp. xvi-xvii of the
Introduction to that work. For subsequent volumes a broadly similar method was followed,
but as the scope of the work expanded to encompass more diverse material and as the size
of the Supplement's staff grew to accommodate this, certain modifications were
introduced to ensure that the work was conducted in the most efficient manner. The
following account contains a slightly more detailed description of the practices that
prevailed at the completion of the Supplement.

i. Collection of material. The raw material serving as a basis for the selection and
preparation of entries in the Supplement consisted of the quotations which were
collected as a result of a programme of directed reading established in 1957. Many
illustrative quotations were also supplied by contributors outside the confines of the
reading programme. All quotations were filed alphabetically according to catchword, and
were available to staff working on the Supplement, to those working on other
departmental projects, and to other interested scholars.

ii. Sorting. In order to establish which entries should be prepared for the Supplement,
the entire quotation file was inspected section by section - in the early years by the
editor; subsequently by his senior colleagues. Cards illustrating words and meanings
selected for inclusion in the Supplement were extracted from the file, and grouped into
?bundles? (each consisting of between thirty and fifty items), ready for drafting. The
primary selection was made by comparing the contents of the file with the relevant
section of the OED, along with that of the 1933 Supplement which the new Supplement was
to supersede. In addition, note was taken of terms not recorded (or sparsely attested)
in the quotation file, but which seemed to deserve inclusion in the Supplement on the
basis of their appearance in other dictionaries. Cards representing items already
covered by the OED, as well as items considered too ephemeral or otherwise irrelevant to
the Supplement, and pre-datings from before the modern period, were refiled in a
separate sequence for possible later use. ?Bundles? of material were then handed to
editorial assistants for drafting.

iii. Drafting. This process involved the preparation of a first draft of a dictionary
entry for all of the items in a ?bundle?. Each assistant editor was expected to prepare
complete entries, i.e. to ascertain the pronunciation and etymology of each new term
where appropriate, to compose a definition, and to select and verify the quotations
used. Clearly, the better an entry was prepared at this stage, the less work was needed
in revising and editing it later. During this process the material available from the
quotation file was augmented by further quotations found in the department's library of
dictionaries, concordances, and other reference works. Often it was necessary for
additional research work to be done in other libraries, such as the Bodleian Library in
Oxford, the British Library in London, the Library of Congress in Washington, and
elsewhere, in order to trace earlier and further quotations and to provide more detailed
information for the definition. This work was normally conducted by library researchers
appointed for the purpose. The library researchers were also responsible for verifying
quotations from sources not available in the departmental library. All general items
were drafted by non-specialist assistant editors; scientific, natural history, and
social science terms were passed to specialist staff for drafting. Dictionary entries
were prepared in handwritten form on 6 x 4 in. slips; a drafted entry would typically
consist of head-cards containing the relevant headword, pronunciation and etymology
where appropriate, the definition, and other information, followed by other cards
bearing the quotations selected to illustrate the entry. When the entries were complete
(and all outstanding library research had been returned) they were filed in the main
alphabetical sequence of copy in readiness for subsequent review by senior staff.

iv. Revision. In order to allow the Editor to proceed at an efficient pace through the
material it was necessary to interpose a revision stage between the initial drafting and
the final editing. At first, this involved the incorporation by senior editors of
scientific and technical drafting into the main sequence of entries (with concomitant
adjustments to sense ordering, etc.), and revising long and complex entries.
Subsequently this was extended to the inspection (and, if necessary, revision) of each
entry. Quotations recently added to the quotation file were considered, and alterations
made to entries in the light of these; occasionally new entries were prepared if the
fresh material warranted this.

v. Editing. The final stage of entry preparation was, naturally, the sole responsibility
of the Editor. Every entry was inspected minutely, further revisions were carried out,
and delicate decisions (as in the treatment of ?sensitive? items, the balance in size
between entries from different disciplines, etc.) were made in order to impose an
editorial uniformity on the published work.

vi. Bibliographical collation. In the course of drafting, editorial staff endeavoured to
ensure that the bibliographical details of works cited were correct. But at this stage
it was the task of the bibliographer to establish consistency in respect of the date of
publication, ?short title?, and other matters. For this purpose an index of verified
citation styles, consisting of the majority of the works cited in the Supplement, was
maintained throughout the compilation of the work. From it, a bibliography of the works
most frequently cited in the Supplement was published at the end of Volume IV.

Bibliographical verification was carried out either on the edited slips or, when
publication schedules dictated, on corrected galley proofs.

vii. Proofs and the use of specialist consultants. Copy for the Supplement was sent in
regular instalments to the printer, from whom multiple sets of galley proof for each
range were received in corresponding instalments for further review.

Up to this point, the entries had been compiled entirely by the departmental staff; at
this stage, they were submitted to outside scrutiny. Entries relating to particular
disciplines or geographical regions were examined by consultants with specialist
knowledge: they were often able to suggest modifications or to supply earlier or more
appropriate attestations of the term under consideration. Furthermore, several complete
sets of each batch of galley proofs were sent to critical readers for general comments.
The improvements suggested by such independent experts were vital in maintaining the
standard of Dictionary entries. These comments and suggestions were incorporated by the
Editor or by his senior colleagues, along with the routine proof corrections. Quotations
which had gathered in the files since the preparation of the copy were inspected, and in
the light of them further alterations and additions were made. The corrected galleys
were then reviewed by the Editor, and returned to the printer for setting in pages.

One last important process was carried out in page proof: the verification of
cross-references. Every cross-reference in the batch of page proofs was checked against
its target in the OED, the published volumes of the Supplement, the material in proof,
or the manuscript copy. After the second round of page proof, the material was finally
passed for press. By the time that the last pages of Volume IV were undergoing these
final procedures, the preparation of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary
had begun.

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