...for each word, there should be sentences that show the twists and turns of meanings—the way almost every word slips in its silvery, fishlike way, weaving this way and that, adding subtleties of nuance to itself, and then perhaps shedding them as public mood dictates.” Herbert Coleridge whose bril...
14/7 - Despite the title this book didn't have that much to do with The Surgeon of Crowthorne or the murder of an innocent man which he committed whilst in a psychotic state. That was just a platform for Winchester to give the history of the Oxford English Dictionary - actually a more interesting to...
The making of the Oxford dictionary. This person was creative and just asked a lot of persons to help out in the project. Sending him scripts and making up sentences while he edit and picked the usable entry. Very entertaining read.
While it's written more as an almost disassociated series of articles about the Oxford English Dictionary and a mad man who was pivotal in helping create it. At first the dictionary's editor, James Murray, didn't know that the man who did so much work on the dictionary was in fact incarcerated in B...
What Goodreader wouldn't like a story about words? Easily 3 Stars for this tale of how an American doctor played a central role in the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary. I was amazed and humbled by the story of James Murray, who only had formal schooling to age 14, yet rose to lead the OED ef...
hmmm, I'm a Winchester (partial-) sceptic. in shortest possible terms, if an educated person is locked up in an insane asylum, why wouldn't they participate heavily in an academic project requiring detailed search through old texts? I'm not sure that I'm shocked and dazed by the central animating pr...
Who would have thought a book about the creation of a dictionary would be riveting reading? Engaging story about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary; the project's leader, professor James Murray; and one of its main contribotors, Dr. W. C. Minor. What twists this tale is the discovery th...
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) had no English dictionary to reference when he wrote his 38 plays, sonnets and poems. Until Samuel Johnson, an English writer and lexicographer, compiled A Dictionary of the English Language the English speaking people had few concise or friendly dictionaries to refe...
I chose this book since so many of my friends highly recommended it, but to be honest I was a little hesitant. I couldn't figure out what could be so interesting about the compilation of a dictionary. Simon Winchester, the author and also narrator of the audiobook, chooses just the right details. As...
I know I read this. I don't know when but I know I did, so I'd better add it before I forget it entirely.As carelessly as I use the star ratings, I wouldn't be so unfair as to rate this after, let me think, at least 3 years. But I'd call it about a three. Not as much OED as I would have liked, and r...
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