The Information - James Gleick [209]
3. TWO WORDBOOKS
♦ “IN SUCH BUSIE, AND ACTIVE TIMES”: Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, 3rd ed. (London: 1722), 42.
♦ A BOOK IN 1604 WITH A RAMBLING TITLE: Robert Cawdrey, A Table Alphabeticall (London: Edmund Weaver, 1604) may be found in the Bodleian Library; in a facsimile edition, Robert A. Peters, ed. (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1966); online via the University of Toronto Library; and, most satisfyingly, reprinted as John Simpson, ed., The First English Dictionary, 1604: Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2007).
♦ A SINGLE 1591 PAMPHLET: Robert Greene, A Notable Discovery of Coosnage (1591; repr., Gloucester, U.K.: Dodo Press, 2008); Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957), 252.
♦ “IT WERE A THING VERIE PRAISEWORTHIE”: Richard Mulcaster, The First Part of the Elementarie Which Entreateth Chefelie of the Right Writing of Our English Tung (London: Thomas Vautroullier, 1582).
♦ “SOME MEN SEEK SO FAR FOR OUTLANDISH ENGLISH”: John Simpson, ed., The First English Dictionary, 41.
♦ “NOT CONFORMING HIMSELF”: John Strype, Historical Collections of the Life and Acts of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Aylmer (London: 1701), 129, quoted in John Simpson, ed., The First English Dictionary, 10.
♦ HE COPIED THE REMARKS ABOUT INKHORN TERMS: Gertrude E. Noyes, “The First English Dictionary, Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall,” Modern Language Notes 58, no. 8 (1943): 600.
♦ “SO MORE KNOWLEDGE WILL BE BROUGHT INTO THIS LAND”: Edmund Coote, The English Schoole-maister (London: Ralph Jackson & Robert Dexter, 1596), 2.
♦ “FOR EXAMPLE I INTEND TO DISCUSS AMO”: Lloyd W. Daly, Contributions to a History of Alphabeticization in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Brussels: Latomus, 1967), 73.
♦ NOT UNTIL 1613 WAS THE FIRST ALPHABETICAL CATALOGUE: William Dunn Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1598–1867 (London: Rivingtons, 1868), 39.
♦ “LET ME MENTION THAT THE WORDS OR NAMES”: Gottfried Leibniz, Unvorgreifliche Gedanken, quoted and translated by Werner Hüllen, English Dictionaries 800–1700: The Topical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 16n.
♦ “SAYWHAT, CORRUPTLY CALLED A DEFINITION”: Ralph Lever, The Arte of Reason (London: H. Bynneman, 1573).
♦ “DEFINITION … BEING NOTHING BUT MAKING ANOTHER UNDERSTAND”: John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ch. 3, sect. 10.
♦ “SO LONG AS MEN WERE IN FACT OBLIGED”: Galileo, letter to Mark Welser, 4 May 1612, trans. Stillman Drake, in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, 92.
♦ “I DO NOT DEFINE TIME, SPACE, PLACE, AND MOTION”: Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, trans. Andrew Motte (Scholium) 6.
♦ JOHN BULLOKAR, OTHERWISE LEFT AS FAINT A MARK: Jonathon Green, Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made (New York: Holt, 1996), 181.
♦ “WE REALLY DON’T LIKE BEING PUSHED”: Interview, John Simpson, 13 September 2006.
♦ “DICTIONARY, A MALEVOLENT LITERARY DEVICE”: Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (New York: Dover, 1993), 25.
♦ “IN GIVING EXPLANATIONS I ALREADY HAVE TO USE LANGUAGE”: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 47.
♦ “THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY, LIKE THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION”: James A. H. Murray, “The Evolution of English Lexicography,” Romanes Lecture (1900).
♦ W. H. AUDEN DECLARED: Peter Gilliver et al., The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 82.
♦ ANTHONY BURGESS WHINGED: Anthony Burgess, “OED +,” in But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen? Homage to Qwert Yuiop and Other Writings (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), 139. He could not let go, either. In a later essay, “Ameringlish,” he complained again.
♦ “EVERY FORM IN WHICH A WORD”: “Writing the OED: Spellings,” Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/about/writing/spellings.html (accessed 6 April 2007).
♦ “WHICH, WHILE IT WAS EMPLOYED