OED: 75 years and more

1853 (150 years ago)

The "birth" of what eventually became the OED is generally dated to late 1857, when Richard Chenevix Trench read his paper "On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries" to the Philological Society. However, it is worth noting that on 27 May 1853 the Philological Society elected Frederick Furnivall as its honorary Secretary (jointly with the classicist T. H. Key). Furnivall's part in the creation of the OED is almost impossible to overstate: he was a key figure in turning the Philological Society's attention to the subject of English dictionaries even before Trench read his paper; he was appointed to one of the Committees set up by the Society to oversee work on the proposed Dictionary; when the first editor, Herbert Coleridge, died in 1861, Furnivall took over, and organized the work of the readers and sub-editors for some years; even after the appointment of James Murray as editor in 1879 he never ceased to work for the Dictionary, not least by sending in thousands of quotation slips, many of them cut from his daily newspapers. Shown here is a cutting taken by Furnivall from the Daily Chronicle of 2 February 1910, only a few months before he died. Such quotations are still being made use of by today's OED editors: the latest OED Online update includes a new entry for the word must-have, and Furnivall's quotation is included.