WEBVTT - You Down With OED? 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:02.920 Hey, everybody, we want to let you know that we 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:07.280 are doing our traditional Pacific Northwest Swing for our live 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:11.320 show next year, in fact, the end of January next year, 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:12.760 very early next year, and. 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:16.239 We're starting out in Seattle, Washington on January twenty fourth 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:19.520 at the Paramount Theater. It's huge, that's right, and then 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:23.040 on to Portland on January twenty fifth at Revolution Hall, 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.360 the place we always are. It's kind of our home 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.160 away from home in Portland. And then we're gonna wrap 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:30.840 it all up at the thing that started the Pacific 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:33.760 Northwest Tour in the first place all those years back. 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.240 SF Sketch Fest will be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:39.680 on Friday, January twenty sixth, right. 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:41.840 Chuck, that's right, And remember you can go to stuff 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.839 youshould Know dot com click on tours in order to 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:47.199 get to the correct ticket link or go to the 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.159 venue page only. Do not go to scalper sites. 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:52.520 That's right, and we'll see you guys in January. 0:00:52.680 --> 0:01:00.360 Okay, welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.679 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:10.360 Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know. 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:17.600 I believe a is an order. Why because we're debuting 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:19.520 a brand new writer. 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.560 Oh yeah, great idea, Chuck, thank you for doing that. 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.720 Yeah, welcome aboard Alison Miller. Alison came to us. This 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:29.560 is by way of Livia, right, is a recommendation. 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.480 Yep, we said, Lvia, you're great, you know and the 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:34.880 other great writer. She said, actually I got one I 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:36.479 can recommend, And here we are. 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:40.720 Yeah, and Alison Miller did a how it works here 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:42.560 is we do like sort of a test article, and 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:46.039 this is that test article. So it obviously worked. And 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.520 Allison is a historian and researcher and just did a 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:52.280 fantastic job. So welcome, Welcome to the fam. Allison. 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.520 Welcome Alison here. I'll coordinate you too. Do do do do? 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:57.960 Yeah, you do it better than me. So I was 0:01:57.960 --> 0:01:58.680 hoping you a chime in. 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.240 I just put some enthusiasm, and I think that's the difference, 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.360 that's right. So yeah, we're talking about the OED today, 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.520 the Oxford English Dictionary, and I have to say, Alison, 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:12.079 knock this one out of the park. I get the 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.840 impression that she may or may not have read significant 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:16.840 portions of the OED in her lifetime. 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:18.320 I think Alison is smart. 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:21.520 So and she kind of starts off by talking about 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:25.520 different kinds of dictionaries, which is significant because the OED 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:30.119 the Oxford English Dictionary is a specific kind of dictionary. 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:35.000 It's not a regular, average joe, you know, work at 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:40.200 a dictionary like some other dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:45.080 is a historical dictionary, so it not only tells you 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.120 the definition of the word, there may even be multiple definitions. 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:50.480 By the way, I don't know if you've ever looked 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:53.120 at a dictionary before, but sometimes one word can have 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:57.760 more than one definition. It's nuts, right, the OED says. 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:00.520 And by the way, here's where that word came from, 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:05.520 and here's examples of its first use to it's probably 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:08.040 most recent use for one of its most recent uses. 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:10.920 So you can see how this specific word in the 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:13.240 English language evolved over time. 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:15.200 Yeah, I didn't know that. 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:18.440 It's it's pretty ambitious, it is. 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:21.880 And historical dictionaries they don't they don't say like, well 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.880 that that meaning is not something that people use it 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:28.920 for anymore, like macaroni. Whatever the heck they meant in 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:29.680 that song. 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:33.960 The Yankee Doodles, They any one, Yeah, I took that 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:35.400 as a reference to pot. 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:40.440 But my point is they don't say, like, let's get 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.960 rid of that old that old definition. Like the whole 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:48.160 idea for the OED is that the English language is alive, 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:53.160 and so the OED is alive, and we're gonna we're 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:56.840 gonna leave it in there and go forward in time. 0:03:56.960 --> 0:03:58.800 But if you if you want to look up these 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.480 old usages and these old meanings, it's all right there 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:07.480 for you in this massive, massive dictionary that whose aim 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:10.960 was to include every word in the English language and 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.160 every usage of that word up until. 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.240 Now, starting in eleven fifty c. 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:19.440 Yeah, as far as the words go. They didn't start 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:21.719 the dictionary then, but they went back to Middle English 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.560 to get what we now have is a third edition, 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:29.640 more than six hundred thousand entries, of which we have 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:33.800 eight hundred and fifty thousand definitions. See three million of 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:39.480 those quotations, which is amazing. And although I think we're 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:43.279 locked in with the beginning in the end because the 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:46.039 first word is a, there's no way you can get 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:51.120 before that in line no, and the last word is ziziva, 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.799 and there's no way that someone could create a word 0:04:55.720 --> 0:05:00.560 that is after z y zz y va. It would 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:02.400 have to be zz zz. 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.840 Yeah z or zz top. I'm surprised they didn't mention 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:07.640 zz top. 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.680 Yeah. Don't talk to me about cartoons sleep bubbles. So 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:14.599 I think we're locked in it as Actually, Allison has 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:18.320 a great title for this, the OED. Cohen A to Zizia, 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:20.600 I'm sorry, Ziza already messed it up. 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.440 Well, it's a tough word, zyzzyv a. It's fun to 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:26.480 spell out loud because you say it like that with 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.240 some oomph, but it's a tough word to say. Did 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:30.880 you define it? 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:32.279 Uh? 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:32.960 No, go ahead. 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:38.359 It's a weavil yeah, and it always was right. So 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:41.039 one thing about the OED You might say, well, like wow, 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:46.200 that's a lot of information packed into one tome. You'd 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:49.400 be right. If you don't know much about the Oxford 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:51.920 English Dictionary, you may at least have the idea that 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:55.320 it's enormous, that it's way bigger than your average dictionary, 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:58.440 because those six hundred thousand entries with eight hundred and 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.760 fifty thousand definitions and three million quotations, when you put 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:03.920 them all together, it takes up a lot of space. 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.120 In fact, I by my estimate, it takes up something 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.600 like an eighth of the entire Internet. 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:16.400 Right, should we read some of this these fast stats? 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:18.440 Oh yeah, let's do that. 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:23.400 So I believe this is the first volume. 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:25.480 The first Yeah, the whole first edition, I think. 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:27.760 Yeah, the whole first edition. So this isn't even the 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:30.400 current edition. This is the one that was finished up 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:34.200 in nineteen twenty eight. At the time it had four 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.520 hundred and fifteen thousand words, half a million definitions, one 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:40.560 point eight million quotations. But this is the part I 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:42.839 wanted to get to. One hundred and seventy eight miles 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:47.080 of type, fifty million words, four feet of shelf space, 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:53.040 and ten or twenty half volume. So you know that 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:57.400 Encyclopedia Britannica set you grew up with in your hallway, 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.039 that's basically what this dictionary is. First edition looked like. 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:05.120 Yeah, and back in nineteen thirty, nineteen twenty eight, I 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:10.320 guess when it came out, you paid about today's equivalent 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:17.160 of three three hundred and sixty pounds sterling for a dictionary. Yeah, 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:21.720 about four grand in US dollars today, And according to 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:25.080 the Bank of England, that was equal to two hundred 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.560 and twenty eight days wages for a skilled worker in 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:32.600 nineteen thirty, imagine spending most of your year's salary on 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:33.480 a dictionary. 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:36.720 Yeah. I think the point has got to be that 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:39.880 very like you had to be a very well healed 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:42.880 person trying to impress other people by owning a copy 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:43.440 of this thing. 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:48.360 Back then, right, yeah, or a library, well exactly. So, yeah, 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.440 that was the first edition. It's gotten even bigger as 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.640 we've seen over time, and so now finally the Internet 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:57.240 was born. I think to howse the third edition of 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.840 the Oxford English Dictionary, which is where we're at now, 0:08:00.360 --> 0:08:04.320 and one thing that they do, which is pretty sharp. 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:08.000 As the dictionary comes out, new words are being added 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.880 to it all the time. They're probably finding less and 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:13.560 less old words that they hadn't included. But you know, 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:17.000 like you said, the English language is living, so it's 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.720 expanding and contracting and adding new words to it all 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.040 the time. So by the time those things go to 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:27.000 press and that last volume of the edition comes out, 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:29.960 there's words that are left over that are just constantly 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:33.080 being added. So I think on a quarterly basis, they 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:39.160 release supplements essentially that have new words that came out 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:43.000 or were coined since the volume that contained that letter 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:44.960 was published in the latest edition. 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.040 That's right, and we'll get to how those supplements figured 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:50.840 in back then and what they do with those today. 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:54.960 But the other really unique thing about the OED is 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:57.640 that it is a and always has been, from the 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:02.520 very very beginning, a crowd source work. Yeah, right from 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:05.040 the beginning. The editors who we're going to talk about, 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.840 the original editors, editors here in a minute. They said, hey, public, 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:13.280 we need help. So if you're into this, you've got 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:15.040 a little time. If you like to read, if you're 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.480 a linguist, you're into words, if you love language, go 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:22.280 back to Chaucer, start reading and find these words that 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:26.120 we're looking for. Find usages of these words descend into 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:30.320 us by hand on they call it a slip, a 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.520 little four by six sheet of paper and mail it 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.400 into us. And you could very well have a hand 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:39.520 in creating the Oxford English Dictionary. 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.840 Yeah, pretty cool. And they got a really great response 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:44.240 to it, and I think still do. 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:48.000 Today, oh for sure. But that's also explains why you have, 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:52.719 you know, quotes from Chaucer and Shakespeare, and also, as 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:56.280 Alison points out, quotes from like a social media post. 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.400 As a usage example of a word. 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.320 Yeah. She also used an example that came from the 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:06.319 most recent quarterly update from September twenty twenty three. Porch 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:09.120 pirate appears in there, and so it's a really good 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:13.520 illustration of what the OED does. They explain that it's 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:17.679 someone who steals packages from doorsteps. Everybody knows that. Yeah, 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.400 but did you know that it first came about from 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:25.240 a news segment on kfo R from Oklahoma Cities, one 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.440 of their local broadcasting stations. 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:30.000 Yeah, so they'll have that. 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:31.280 Wait, you didn't doubt. 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:33.280 It, No, well no, I said they would have that. 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:37.319 I gotcha as like the example or whatever. And then 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:39.280 if you want to dig deeper and just say, well, 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.079 what about this word porch, then they'll take you back 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.760 to the thirteen hundreds with the definition of porch and 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:51.079 then examples of these what they call senses like that's 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:55.200 when not a tense, it's a sense. It's like how 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:56.440 the word is used basically. 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:00.000 Yeah, and it might not be used that way anymore necessary. 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.040 Yeah, but they will have all of them listed and 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.800 you can see sort of the evolution of not only 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:08.160 the word porch, but when you eventually get to something 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:09.000 like porch pirate. 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:10.000 Yeah. 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.199 So it's pretty neat stuff like, that's what they do. 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:16.920 And they've been doing this for one hundred something years 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:20.400 since they think the first the first volume of the 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:23.319 first edition came out and I think eighteen eighty four. 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:26.560 Right, Yeah, and those supplements you were talking about, I 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:28.559 promised to kind of explain how they do things now. 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:32.720 They were for many many years. They were released just 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.200 like hey, here's this extra thing. But it created a 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:38.560 problem if you're like, well, wait a minute, now I 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:40.400 have to look up a word in two different places 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:43.960 if it has a more modern usage. And so eventually 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:48.480 they started combining them. I think they finally did that 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.400 in what nineteen eighty nine, where the supplements were actually 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.640 worked into the main addition. 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:55.120 Yeah, just the first edition. 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:58.160 Yeah, so they finished that in nineteen eighty nine, and 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.600 a couple years before that they had finally put it 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.320 on a CD ROM And then, like you said, it 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:05.920 only exists today. Well, I mean you can get copies, 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:08.880 but they're not releasing I don't think print editions any longer. 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.520 It's just a online subscription type thing now. 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:15.040 Yeah, and usually I mean it's pay right, so yeah, subscription, 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:18.320 so usually you can log in through your library pretty neat. 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:20.560 They're also in the midst of putting out a third edition, 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.040 so look for that in the next century. That's right, 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:27.240 I say, we take a little break, Charles, and then 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.480 we'll come back and talk about the history of the OED. 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:45.719 How we got here, let's do it. 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:57.080 So the OED is not the first English dictionary ever. 0:12:57.480 --> 0:12:59.840 In fact, the first one ever was from sixteen oh four. 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:04.160 It's called a Table Alphabetical of hard usual English Words 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:09.280 by Robert Kaudrey, and he basically just put this together 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:13.360 to help people, I guess, explain themselves in English better. 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.959 He it was I think, words that were commonly used 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:21.080 but not necessarily commonly understood. So that was the first one. 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:26.600 But the I guess the OED really traces its spiritual 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:30.439 roots to a more recent phenomenon that the Brothers Grim 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:34.880 had started, which was essentially a dictionary of a language 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:39.480 in order to show the history of that language, ostensibly 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:43.560 in order to prove how great that language actually was. 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:48.280 Yeah, we shout out to a couple of great episodes 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:51.200 we did many years ago, one on the Brothers Grim 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:54.000 and was there one on the Just the Fairy Tales? 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.280 Yes, there, it was a two parter, right. 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.680 Yeah, yeah, that was That was a good series, So 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:01.720 go back and listen to that. But Jacob and Wilhelm 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.199 Grimm did what you said. They were like, hey, we 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:09.560 want to create a German dictionary from Martin Luther on 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:12.560 which eventually they died before it came out, but it 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:16.640 was called I believe the first Fascicle, and the Fascal 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:19.400 is just the first part, basically like, hey, we finished 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.600 a through j or whatever. I think the first fasccal 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.040 came out when they were alive, but of the Deutsches 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:32.320 Vertebuch It and I believe they died in the late 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.080 eighteen fifty nine, for Wilhelm in eighteen sixty three, and 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.560 it finally came out in nineteen sixty one in full, 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:43.640 so they weren't even close. And she points out Alison 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.640 that Jacob died at the F's he was working on 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:48.680 the word fruit or di fruit. 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:49.480 Yeah. 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:52.080 I want to say it was pretty good. Oh you 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:52.560 want to say it. 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:57.120 I want to say it too. Deutsche's Vertebruk which means 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:01.080 literally German word book, right, yeah, it's more like buch 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:04.960 Deutsche's Vertebuch VerTech. 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:05.880 Yeah, there you go. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:08.400 Yeah, I said it way better. In my head, I 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.640 think I tried too hard. So, like I was saying 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:16.400 behind the Grim, the whole initiative is not just like 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:22.200 documenting definitions for German words. They wanted to trace the 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:26.320 history of the German language because they suspected that far 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:29.640 in the distant past, all of these disparate groups of 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:33.160 people who are now members of separate nations were all 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.600 members of the same Germanic speaking tribe, and that this 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.920 had been like a glorious, amazing civilization that was now fractured, 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:44.120 and maybe if we understand it a little better, it 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.480 can come back together and dare I say, take over 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:48.000 the world. 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:52.400 It's like easy, brothers Grim. Yeah, they had a good idea. 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:54.840 It got a little perverted along the way, although it 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:56.760 may have been a bad idea from the beginning, you know. 0:15:57.600 --> 0:15:59.880 Yeah, this this does link up very oddly with that 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:03.520 episode that we just recorded on Tectonic Plates. 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:03.920 It does. 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:06.280 I think the lesson here is anytime you have a 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:10.920 social or cultural movement, to go back and find how 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:16.720 great your specific culture is or was. That's a red 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:17.920 flag for everybody else. 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:22.520 Yeah, probably so so the OED it was basically the 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.120 same thing, and they're like, well, you've got your German book, 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:28.760 but what's greater than the English language. Let's do that 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:29.479 for ourselves. 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:31.160 We're going to make an English word book. 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.720 That's what it's called. So the Gentleman scholars, and that's 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:39.560 in quotes from Britain got together to form the Philological 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:44.320 Society in London in eighteen forty two from the Greek 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:49.840 philos love and logos words. So philology is just the 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.440 love of words. It's really very plain and kind of wonderful. Yeah, 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.960 and it's the study of the language in the written language. 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.400 And a lot of philologists will say like Greek and 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:03.800 Latin or what we're concentrating in. But this, at this time, 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:05.800 there were people like, well, wait a minute, English seems 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.439 to really be pretty important too. I know it's not 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:12.439 Latin or Greek, but maybe we should look forward and 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.480 get down with this English dictionary. And they said yes. 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:20.520 In eighteen fifty seven, after that, that's when it was 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:22.879 that's when the Grims put out their first fascicle. In 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:25.680 fact was around the same time. They said they got 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.320 a head start on us, but I think we can 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:30.800 catch up and do a great job as well, And 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:31.600 in fact they did. 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:34.240 Yeah, and As a matter of fact, word got out 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.720 about this and everybody was like, hey, this is a 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:40.720 great project. The members of the Philological Society in England 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:46.080 were kind of celebrated culturally for trying to do this thing, 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:49.159 for documenting the English language and how great it was. 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:54.159 So what they decided to do first was to find 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:58.160 out all the words that weren't already in other dictionaries 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.840 of English or any dictionary that contained English words. Unregistered 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:05.080 words is what they called them, and they were going 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:08.800 to make a dictionary of unregistered words to basically complete everything. 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:13.119 And there was a guy, Richard Chenovic's Trench R. C. 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:18.800 Trench who gave some lectures against this idea and essentially said, 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:22.400 rather than patch an existing garment, let's make a brand 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:26.040 new garment from whole cloth, and it's going to be 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:31.560 the most beautiful garment anyone's ever seen. It's gonna well, yeah, 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:38.159 plus sequin shoulder pads, the whole shebang, and to me, 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:42.760 that's that's the height of amazing fashion. So he actually 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:46.919 convinced the Philological Society to veer a different way and 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.040 rather than just take, you know, the words that hadn't 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.000 been defined and define them and make that take on 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:58.600 the entire English language, going back to eleven fifty forward 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.840 and again when you're doing this, So just think about 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.359 going into the deep past and saying, Okay, we're going 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:06.960 to do all words from eleven fifty to eighteen fifty. 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:11.119 That's daunting enough. But they were also signing up for 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:15.720 essentially a never ending unfinished work. Yeah, because as we've seen, 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:18.679 every time they put in an addition, there's any number 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:21.240 of new words that have come along or that they 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:25.720 didn't they didn't have before. Like it's an ongoing, never 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:29.560 ending process. They'll never be done with the OED. And 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.640 I suspect that probably drives some members of the OED 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:35.320 staff completely mad. 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:39.080 Maybe. And you also have to keep in mind that 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.640 they did this without a publisher secured, and in fact 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:46.040 did work for about two decades without a publisher even. 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:46.760 Yeah. 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:48.920 So they were just working on what was then called 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:53.720 the New English Dictionary, was the I guess the working title, 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.040 and their first editor was a dude to name Herbert Coleridge. 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.160 And if you're thinking, I wonder if if he was, Yes, 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:04.760 he was. He was the grandson of Samuel Taylor. And 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:07.920 there were several predictions in here. They were all wrong 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:10.320 as to how big this project could be and how 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:13.440 long it would take. But Herbert was the first one 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:15.960 to be way off base and said it'll be about 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:18.440 seven thousand pages and we'll be done in a decade. 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:23.000 Not how it worked out. They started working, They started 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:26.840 building this thing from you from a forward, and they 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:30.760 made a list of books like basically the English Language 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:35.560 Literary Canon, and said, all right, volunteers, you all wrote in, 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:39.080 said you had some time, so start reading. Read these 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.520 books and look out for these words, and when you 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.119 find them, put them on a slip word for word, 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.200 send them in to us. Again, that's a four x 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:50.200 six inch piece of paper. It was all very sort 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:55.080 of regimented, and they said, please read these books. And 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.119 we like English literature because the whole point of this 0:20:58.200 --> 0:20:59.760 is to talk about how great we were and how 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:01.719 great our works and language is. 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.800 Yeah, so are That's why they first were like, we're 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:08.800 going to look through the great works of English language 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:12.600 only because this is the highest use of these words. 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.440 So these are the best examples. These are the quotations 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:18.040 we want to use. And they were very narrow minded 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.720 in that sense. They were really until the twentieth century. 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:24.440 They were very much centered on that. That's what they 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:27.000 were going to use to derive their quotes from, because 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:29.520 it would just demonstrate how great the English language was. 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:33.000 Look at how these amazing English writers used it. Right. So, 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:37.320 Herbert Coleridge died in eighteen sixty one. I get the 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:40.640 impression he was only working on it for a few years. 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:43.800 But he was because he died right, right, but four 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:44.280 years later. 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.120 Yeah, so it was like four years, right. But he 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:50.000 really threw himself into it so much so that he 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:56.399 apparently on his deathbed he had definitions like slips scattered about, 0:21:56.680 --> 0:22:00.320 like on the quilt of his deathbed. He died working, Yeah, 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:04.720 and he had contracted tuberculosis. And when the doctor was like, 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.280 this is not ever going to get better. It will 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:09.760 get better, but you're going to be dead, That's how 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.040 it's going to get better, Herbert Coleridge was like, oh, 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:16.360 I must start Sanskrit tomorrow, which has taken to mean 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:19.840 that he had never learned Sanskrit. He was a polyglot. 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:22.600 He studied all sorts of different languages, and he had 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:24.679 never gotten to Sanskrit. Now that he realized he's going 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:26.960 to die, he needed to start on it tomorrow. 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:31.080