You beaut, Hughesy

Last 17 June I wrote of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Ammon Shea’s book Reading the OED: One man, one year, 21730 pages [1]. Unlike Shea who’s obsessed with dictionaries, I’m merely fascinated by them. I’m also daunted by the thought of people considering a word and having to produce a concise yet comprehensive definition of it; not to mention its etymology, common usage etc. Thankfully it’s their job and not mine. Horses for courses. I think there’d be little disagreement that the OED’s the doyen of dictionaries (but Americans may dissent because Noah Webster was an American). It’s massive – as the statistics in my 27 June post confirm. And, you’d think, accurate and authoritative. But no. Last Monday the Age reported that Queensland University physicist Stephen Hughes (pictured) found the OED’s definition of the word ‘siphon’ had remained erroneous since 1911 – by stating that atmospheric pressure (rather than gravity) is the force behind a siphon [2]. Dr Hughes has reportedly alerted the OED’s revision team which, fortuitously, had just completing revising words starting with ‘R’. He’s apparently seen the same error in other English language dictionaries, both paper and online. And now he’s turning his attention to those in other languages. The man may just have found a long-term hobby. The moral? Never believe anything uncritically, no matter how authoritative its source seems. Look at the evidence and then draw the appropriate conclusion. Blind trust is blind stupidity. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 423

Reading the OED: One man, one year, 21730 pages, whose 223 pages I’ve just finished reading, is a cute and entertaining book. Ammon Shea (pictured; hear him here) is a dictionary aficionado who in 12 months up to 18 July 2007 read all 20 volumes of the 1989 second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. His 2008 book has 26 chapters – one for each alphabet letter. Each begins with a few pages of Shea’s text on a topic related to his OED reading or a more general dictionary-related subject, followed by a few unusual words starting with the relevant alphabet letter, with Shea’s comments on each. I liked the text but to me the words and comments were silly. More text and fewer if any words/comments would’ve made a better book. I loved the statistics: The 20 volumes weigh 132.72 pounds (62½ kg); on the 21,730 pages are 59M words and 2½M quotations but no pictures; the first edition’s first fascicle was published in 1884 and the last one in 1928; 20-25 words start with ‘q’ but their second letter’s not ‘u’; the letter ‘s’ easily has the most entries spanning four volumes and 3,000 pages; the letter ‘x’ has the fewest entries spanning only 13 pages; the longest entry for one word is ‘set’ with 60,000 words over 25 pages giving 155 definitions; and the OED’s last word’s ‘zyxt’. I read Shea’s book in three days. It’s fun. Good on him.