Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we want to let you know that we
Speaker 1: are doing our traditional Pacific Northwest Swing for our live
Speaker 1: show next year, in fact, the end of January next year,
Speaker 1: very early next year, and.
Speaker 2: We're starting out in Seattle, Washington on January twenty fourth
Speaker 2: at the Paramount Theater. It's huge, that's right, and then
Speaker 2: on to Portland on January twenty fifth at Revolution Hall,
Speaker 2: the place we always are. It's kind of our home
Speaker 2: away from home in Portland. And then we're gonna wrap
Speaker 2: it all up at the thing that started the Pacific
Speaker 2: Northwest Tour in the first place all those years back.
Speaker 2: SF Sketch Fest will be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater
Speaker 2: on Friday, January twenty sixth, right.
Speaker 1: Chuck, that's right, And remember you can go to stuff
Speaker 1: youshould Know dot com click on tours in order to
Speaker 1: get to the correct ticket link or go to the
Speaker 1: venue page only. Do not go to scalper sites.
Speaker 2: That's right, and we'll see you guys in January.
Speaker 1: Okay, welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 2: Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: I believe a is an order. Why because we're debuting
Speaker 1: a brand new writer.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, great idea, Chuck, thank you for doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome aboard Alison Miller. Alison came to us. This
Speaker 1: is by way of Livia, right, is a recommendation.
Speaker 2: Yep, we said, Lvia, you're great, you know and the
Speaker 2: other great writer. She said, actually I got one I
Speaker 2: can recommend, And here we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Alison Miller did a how it works here
Speaker 1: is we do like sort of a test article, and
Speaker 1: this is that test article. So it obviously worked. And
Speaker 1: Allison is a historian and researcher and just did a
Speaker 1: fantastic job. So welcome, Welcome to the fam. Allison.
Speaker 2: Welcome Alison here. I'll coordinate you too. Do do do do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you do it better than me. So I was
Speaker 1: hoping you a chime in.
Speaker 2: I just put some enthusiasm, and I think that's the difference,
Speaker 2: that's right. So yeah, we're talking about the OED today,
Speaker 2: the Oxford English Dictionary, and I have to say, Alison,
Speaker 2: knock this one out of the park. I get the
Speaker 2: impression that she may or may not have read significant
Speaker 2: portions of the OED in her lifetime.
Speaker 1: I think Alison is smart.
Speaker 2: So and she kind of starts off by talking about
Speaker 2: different kinds of dictionaries, which is significant because the OED
Speaker 2: the Oxford English Dictionary is a specific kind of dictionary.
Speaker 2: It's not a regular, average joe, you know, work at
Speaker 2: a dictionary like some other dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary
Speaker 2: is a historical dictionary, so it not only tells you
Speaker 2: the definition of the word, there may even be multiple definitions.
Speaker 2: By the way, I don't know if you've ever looked
Speaker 2: at a dictionary before, but sometimes one word can have
Speaker 2: more than one definition. It's nuts, right, the OED says.
Speaker 2: And by the way, here's where that word came from,
Speaker 2: and here's examples of its first use to it's probably
Speaker 2: most recent use for one of its most recent uses.
Speaker 2: So you can see how this specific word in the
Speaker 2: English language evolved over time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: It's it's pretty ambitious, it is.
Speaker 1: And historical dictionaries they don't they don't say like, well
Speaker 1: that that meaning is not something that people use it
Speaker 1: for anymore, like macaroni. Whatever the heck they meant in
Speaker 1: that song.
Speaker 2: The Yankee Doodles, They any one, Yeah, I took that
Speaker 2: as a reference to pot.
Speaker 1: But my point is they don't say, like, let's get
Speaker 1: rid of that old that old definition. Like the whole
Speaker 1: idea for the OED is that the English language is alive,
Speaker 1: and so the OED is alive, and we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it in there and go forward in time.
Speaker 1: But if you if you want to look up these
Speaker 1: old usages and these old meanings, it's all right there
Speaker 1: for you in this massive, massive dictionary that whose aim
Speaker 1: was to include every word in the English language and
Speaker 1: every usage of that word up until.
Speaker 2: Now, starting in eleven fifty c.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as the words go. They didn't start
Speaker 1: the dictionary then, but they went back to Middle English
Speaker 1: to get what we now have is a third edition,
Speaker 1: more than six hundred thousand entries, of which we have
Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty thousand definitions. See three million of
Speaker 1: those quotations, which is amazing. And although I think we're
Speaker 1: locked in with the beginning in the end because the
Speaker 1: first word is a, there's no way you can get
Speaker 1: before that in line no, and the last word is ziziva,
Speaker 1: and there's no way that someone could create a word
Speaker 1: that is after z y zz y va. It would
Speaker 1: have to be zz zz.
Speaker 2: Yeah z or zz top. I'm surprised they didn't mention
Speaker 2: zz top.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Don't talk to me about cartoons sleep bubbles. So
Speaker 1: I think we're locked in it as Actually, Allison has
Speaker 1: a great title for this, the OED. Cohen A to Zizia,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Ziza already messed it up.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a tough word, zyzzyv a. It's fun to
Speaker 2: spell out loud because you say it like that with
Speaker 2: some oomph, but it's a tough word to say. Did
Speaker 2: you define it?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: No, go ahead.
Speaker 2: It's a weavil yeah, and it always was right. So
Speaker 2: one thing about the OED You might say, well, like wow,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of information packed into one tome. You'd
Speaker 2: be right. If you don't know much about the Oxford
Speaker 2: English Dictionary, you may at least have the idea that
Speaker 2: it's enormous, that it's way bigger than your average dictionary,
Speaker 2: because those six hundred thousand entries with eight hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand definitions and three million quotations, when you put
Speaker 2: them all together, it takes up a lot of space.
Speaker 2: In fact, I by my estimate, it takes up something
Speaker 2: like an eighth of the entire Internet.
Speaker 1: Right, should we read some of this these fast stats?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 1: So I believe this is the first volume.
Speaker 2: The first Yeah, the whole first edition, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole first edition. So this isn't even the
Speaker 1: current edition. This is the one that was finished up
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty eight. At the time it had four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen thousand words, half a million definitions, one
Speaker 1: point eight million quotations. But this is the part I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to. One hundred and seventy eight miles
Speaker 1: of type, fifty million words, four feet of shelf space,
Speaker 1: and ten or twenty half volume. So you know that
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Britannica set you grew up with in your hallway,
Speaker 1: that's basically what this dictionary is. First edition looked like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and back in nineteen thirty, nineteen twenty eight, I
Speaker 2: guess when it came out, you paid about today's equivalent
Speaker 2: of three three hundred and sixty pounds sterling for a dictionary. Yeah,
Speaker 2: about four grand in US dollars today, And according to
Speaker 2: the Bank of England, that was equal to two hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty eight days wages for a skilled worker in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty, imagine spending most of your year's salary on
Speaker 2: a dictionary.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the point has got to be that
Speaker 1: very like you had to be a very well healed
Speaker 1: person trying to impress other people by owning a copy
Speaker 1: of this thing.
Speaker 2: Back then, right, yeah, or a library, well exactly. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was the first edition. It's gotten even bigger as
Speaker 2: we've seen over time, and so now finally the Internet
Speaker 2: was born. I think to howse the third edition of
Speaker 2: the Oxford English Dictionary, which is where we're at now,
Speaker 2: and one thing that they do, which is pretty sharp.
Speaker 2: As the dictionary comes out, new words are being added
Speaker 2: to it all the time. They're probably finding less and
Speaker 2: less old words that they hadn't included. But you know,
Speaker 2: like you said, the English language is living, so it's
Speaker 2: expanding and contracting and adding new words to it all
Speaker 2: the time. So by the time those things go to
Speaker 2: press and that last volume of the edition comes out,
Speaker 2: there's words that are left over that are just constantly
Speaker 2: being added. So I think on a quarterly basis, they
Speaker 2: release supplements essentially that have new words that came out
Speaker 2: or were coined since the volume that contained that letter
Speaker 2: was published in the latest edition.
Speaker 1: That's right, and we'll get to how those supplements figured
Speaker 1: in back then and what they do with those today.
Speaker 1: But the other really unique thing about the OED is
Speaker 1: that it is a and always has been, from the
Speaker 1: very very beginning, a crowd source work. Yeah, right from
Speaker 1: the beginning. The editors who we're going to talk about,
Speaker 1: the original editors, editors here in a minute. They said, hey, public,
Speaker 1: we need help. So if you're into this, you've got
Speaker 1: a little time. If you like to read, if you're
Speaker 1: a linguist, you're into words, if you love language, go
Speaker 1: back to Chaucer, start reading and find these words that
Speaker 1: we're looking for. Find usages of these words descend into
Speaker 1: us by hand on they call it a slip, a
Speaker 1: little four by six sheet of paper and mail it
Speaker 1: into us. And you could very well have a hand
Speaker 1: in creating the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty cool. And they got a really great response
Speaker 2: to it, and I think still do.
Speaker 1: Today, oh for sure. But that's also explains why you have,
Speaker 1: you know, quotes from Chaucer and Shakespeare, and also, as
Speaker 1: Alison points out, quotes from like a social media post.
Speaker 1: As a usage example of a word.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She also used an example that came from the
Speaker 2: most recent quarterly update from September twenty twenty three. Porch
Speaker 2: pirate appears in there, and so it's a really good
Speaker 2: illustration of what the OED does. They explain that it's
Speaker 2: someone who steals packages from doorsteps. Everybody knows that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but did you know that it first came about from
Speaker 2: a news segment on kfo R from Oklahoma Cities, one
Speaker 2: of their local broadcasting stations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they'll have that.
Speaker 2: Wait, you didn't doubt.
Speaker 1: It, No, well no, I said they would have that.
Speaker 1: I gotcha as like the example or whatever. And then
Speaker 1: if you want to dig deeper and just say, well,
Speaker 1: what about this word porch, then they'll take you back
Speaker 1: to the thirteen hundreds with the definition of porch and
Speaker 1: then examples of these what they call senses like that's
Speaker 1: when not a tense, it's a sense. It's like how
Speaker 1: the word is used basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it might not be used that way anymore necessary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they will have all of them listed and
Speaker 1: you can see sort of the evolution of not only
Speaker 1: the word porch, but when you eventually get to something
Speaker 1: like porch pirate.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's pretty neat stuff like, that's what they do.
Speaker 2: And they've been doing this for one hundred something years
Speaker 2: since they think the first the first volume of the
Speaker 2: first edition came out and I think eighteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and those supplements you were talking about, I
Speaker 1: promised to kind of explain how they do things now.
Speaker 1: They were for many many years. They were released just
Speaker 1: like hey, here's this extra thing. But it created a
Speaker 1: problem if you're like, well, wait a minute, now I
Speaker 1: have to look up a word in two different places
Speaker 1: if it has a more modern usage. And so eventually
Speaker 1: they started combining them. I think they finally did that
Speaker 1: in what nineteen eighty nine, where the supplements were actually
Speaker 1: worked into the main addition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just the first edition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they finished that in nineteen eighty nine, and
Speaker 1: a couple years before that they had finally put it
Speaker 1: on a CD ROM And then, like you said, it
Speaker 1: only exists today. Well, I mean you can get copies,
Speaker 1: but they're not releasing I don't think print editions any longer.
Speaker 1: It's just a online subscription type thing now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and usually I mean it's pay right, so yeah, subscription,
Speaker 2: so usually you can log in through your library pretty neat.
Speaker 2: They're also in the midst of putting out a third edition,
Speaker 2: so look for that in the next century. That's right,
Speaker 2: I say, we take a little break, Charles, and then
Speaker 2: we'll come back and talk about the history of the OED.
Speaker 3: How we got here, let's do it.
Speaker 2: So the OED is not the first English dictionary ever.
Speaker 2: In fact, the first one ever was from sixteen oh four.
Speaker 2: It's called a Table Alphabetical of hard usual English Words
Speaker 2: by Robert Kaudrey, and he basically just put this together
Speaker 2: to help people, I guess, explain themselves in English better.
Speaker 2: He it was I think, words that were commonly used
Speaker 2: but not necessarily commonly understood. So that was the first one.
Speaker 2: But the I guess the OED really traces its spiritual
Speaker 2: roots to a more recent phenomenon that the Brothers Grim
Speaker 2: had started, which was essentially a dictionary of a language
Speaker 2: in order to show the history of that language, ostensibly
Speaker 2: in order to prove how great that language actually was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we shout out to a couple of great episodes
Speaker 1: we did many years ago, one on the Brothers Grim
Speaker 1: and was there one on the Just the Fairy Tales?
Speaker 2: Yes, there, it was a two parter, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was That was a good series, So
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that. But Jacob and Wilhelm
Speaker 1: Grimm did what you said. They were like, hey, we
Speaker 1: want to create a German dictionary from Martin Luther on
Speaker 1: which eventually they died before it came out, but it
Speaker 1: was called I believe the first Fascicle, and the Fascal
Speaker 1: is just the first part, basically like, hey, we finished
Speaker 1: a through j or whatever. I think the first fasccal
Speaker 1: came out when they were alive, but of the Deutsches
Speaker 1: Vertebuch It and I believe they died in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, for Wilhelm in eighteen sixty three, and
Speaker 1: it finally came out in nineteen sixty one in full,
Speaker 1: so they weren't even close. And she points out Alison
Speaker 1: that Jacob died at the F's he was working on
Speaker 1: the word fruit or di fruit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to say it was pretty good. Oh you
Speaker 1: want to say it.
Speaker 2: I want to say it too. Deutsche's Vertebruk which means
Speaker 2: literally German word book, right, yeah, it's more like buch
Speaker 2: Deutsche's Vertebuch VerTech.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I said it way better. In my head, I
Speaker 2: think I tried too hard. So, like I was saying
Speaker 2: behind the Grim, the whole initiative is not just like
Speaker 2: documenting definitions for German words. They wanted to trace the
Speaker 2: history of the German language because they suspected that far
Speaker 2: in the distant past, all of these disparate groups of
Speaker 2: people who are now members of separate nations were all
Speaker 2: members of the same Germanic speaking tribe, and that this
Speaker 2: had been like a glorious, amazing civilization that was now fractured,
Speaker 2: and maybe if we understand it a little better, it
Speaker 2: can come back together and dare I say, take over
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: It's like easy, brothers Grim. Yeah, they had a good idea.
Speaker 2: It got a little perverted along the way, although it
Speaker 2: may have been a bad idea from the beginning, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this this does link up very oddly with that
Speaker 1: episode that we just recorded on Tectonic Plates.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 2: I think the lesson here is anytime you have a
Speaker 2: social or cultural movement, to go back and find how
Speaker 2: great your specific culture is or was. That's a red
Speaker 2: flag for everybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably so so the OED it was basically the
Speaker 1: same thing, and they're like, well, you've got your German book,
Speaker 1: but what's greater than the English language. Let's do that
Speaker 1: for ourselves.
Speaker 2: We're going to make an English word book.
Speaker 1: That's what it's called. So the Gentleman scholars, and that's
Speaker 1: in quotes from Britain got together to form the Philological
Speaker 1: Society in London in eighteen forty two from the Greek
Speaker 1: philos love and logos words. So philology is just the
Speaker 1: love of words. It's really very plain and kind of wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's the study of the language in the written language.
Speaker 1: And a lot of philologists will say like Greek and
Speaker 1: Latin or what we're concentrating in. But this, at this time,
Speaker 1: there were people like, well, wait a minute, English seems
Speaker 1: to really be pretty important too. I know it's not
Speaker 1: Latin or Greek, but maybe we should look forward and
Speaker 1: get down with this English dictionary. And they said yes.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty seven, after that, that's when it was
Speaker 1: that's when the Grims put out their first fascicle. In
Speaker 1: fact was around the same time. They said they got
Speaker 1: a head start on us, but I think we can
Speaker 1: catch up and do a great job as well, And
Speaker 1: in fact they did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and As a matter of fact, word got out
Speaker 2: about this and everybody was like, hey, this is a
Speaker 2: great project. The members of the Philological Society in England
Speaker 2: were kind of celebrated culturally for trying to do this thing,
Speaker 2: for documenting the English language and how great it was.
Speaker 2: So what they decided to do first was to find
Speaker 2: out all the words that weren't already in other dictionaries
Speaker 2: of English or any dictionary that contained English words. Unregistered
Speaker 2: words is what they called them, and they were going
Speaker 2: to make a dictionary of unregistered words to basically complete everything.
Speaker 2: And there was a guy, Richard Chenovic's Trench R. C.
Speaker 2: Trench who gave some lectures against this idea and essentially said,
Speaker 2: rather than patch an existing garment, let's make a brand
Speaker 2: new garment from whole cloth, and it's going to be
Speaker 2: the most beautiful garment anyone's ever seen. It's gonna well, yeah,
Speaker 2: plus sequin shoulder pads, the whole shebang, and to me,
Speaker 2: that's that's the height of amazing fashion. So he actually
Speaker 2: convinced the Philological Society to veer a different way and
Speaker 2: rather than just take, you know, the words that hadn't
Speaker 2: been defined and define them and make that take on
Speaker 2: the entire English language, going back to eleven fifty forward
Speaker 2: and again when you're doing this, So just think about
Speaker 2: going into the deep past and saying, Okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to do all words from eleven fifty to eighteen fifty.
Speaker 2: That's daunting enough. But they were also signing up for
Speaker 2: essentially a never ending unfinished work. Yeah, because as we've seen,
Speaker 2: every time they put in an addition, there's any number
Speaker 2: of new words that have come along or that they
Speaker 2: didn't they didn't have before. Like it's an ongoing, never
Speaker 2: ending process. They'll never be done with the OED. And
Speaker 2: I suspect that probably drives some members of the OED
Speaker 2: staff completely mad.
Speaker 1: Maybe. And you also have to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: they did this without a publisher secured, and in fact
Speaker 1: did work for about two decades without a publisher even.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they were just working on what was then called
Speaker 1: the New English Dictionary, was the I guess the working title,
Speaker 1: and their first editor was a dude to name Herbert Coleridge.
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking, I wonder if if he was, Yes,
Speaker 1: he was. He was the grandson of Samuel Taylor. And
Speaker 1: there were several predictions in here. They were all wrong
Speaker 1: as to how big this project could be and how
Speaker 1: long it would take. But Herbert was the first one
Speaker 1: to be way off base and said it'll be about
Speaker 1: seven thousand pages and we'll be done in a decade.
Speaker 1: Not how it worked out. They started working, They started
Speaker 1: building this thing from you from a forward, and they
Speaker 1: made a list of books like basically the English Language
Speaker 1: Literary Canon, and said, all right, volunteers, you all wrote in,
Speaker 1: said you had some time, so start reading. Read these
Speaker 1: books and look out for these words, and when you
Speaker 1: find them, put them on a slip word for word,
Speaker 1: send them in to us. Again, that's a four x
Speaker 1: six inch piece of paper. It was all very sort
Speaker 1: of regimented, and they said, please read these books. And
Speaker 1: we like English literature because the whole point of this
Speaker 1: is to talk about how great we were and how
Speaker 1: great our works and language is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so are That's why they first were like, we're
Speaker 2: going to look through the great works of English language
Speaker 2: only because this is the highest use of these words.
Speaker 2: So these are the best examples. These are the quotations
Speaker 2: we want to use. And they were very narrow minded
Speaker 2: in that sense. They were really until the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: They were very much centered on that. That's what they
Speaker 2: were going to use to derive their quotes from, because
Speaker 2: it would just demonstrate how great the English language was.
Speaker 2: Look at how these amazing English writers used it. Right. So,
Speaker 2: Herbert Coleridge died in eighteen sixty one. I get the
Speaker 2: impression he was only working on it for a few years.
Speaker 1: But he was because he died right, right, but four
Speaker 1: years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was like four years, right. But he
Speaker 2: really threw himself into it so much so that he
Speaker 2: apparently on his deathbed he had definitions like slips scattered about,
Speaker 2: like on the quilt of his deathbed. He died working, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he had contracted tuberculosis. And when the doctor was like,
Speaker 2: this is not ever going to get better. It will
Speaker 2: get better, but you're going to be dead, That's how
Speaker 2: it's going to get better, Herbert Coleridge was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I must start Sanskrit tomorrow, which has taken to mean
Speaker 2: that he had never learned Sanskrit. He was a polyglot.
Speaker 2: He studied all sorts of different languages, and he had
Speaker 2: never gotten to Sanskrit. Now that he realized he's going
Speaker 2: to die, he needed to start on it tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ironically dying of what was then known as Consumption
Speaker 1: and later TB. So that's a new usage and a
Speaker 1: new entry. Yeah, eighteen seventy nine, we're skipping forward. And
Speaker 1: like I said, this is twenty years after they started.
Speaker 1: This is when they finally found that publisher. At the time,
Speaker 1: they were known another since as Clarendon, later to be
Speaker 1: known as DA DA DA the Oxford University Press. And
Speaker 1: even though they didn't specifically call it the Oxford English
Speaker 1: Dictionary until late I believe the very first publishing in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight was called a New English Dictionary on
Speaker 1: Historical Principles.
Speaker 2: And so we should mention that after Coleridge died, it
Speaker 2: just the whole thing kind of like lost momentum. He
Speaker 2: was a real driving force as the first editor. But
Speaker 2: you know, a few I think twenty or so years
Speaker 2: later it started to pick up again, and it was
Speaker 2: thanks to a new editor named James Murray, who I
Speaker 2: believe was the third editor of all, and he took
Speaker 2: this ball and ran with it, and he is the
Speaker 2: person that you can point to as the one who
Speaker 2: ultimately got the OED published. He was the true driving
Speaker 2: force of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Murray was Scottish, came from a just sort
Speaker 1: of a regular working class, middle class background, was the
Speaker 1: son of a tailor. Apparently his father was a very
Speaker 1: smart man and known for being a smart and sober person.
Speaker 1: And James as a child was a prodigy, was a
Speaker 1: language prodigy, learned his ABC's before he was eighteen months,
Speaker 1: was apparently reading and writing in Greek by seven, left
Speaker 1: school at fourteen, was studying four languages and eventually came
Speaker 1: to London to be the headmaster of a school there.
Speaker 1: And that is where in London he joined up with
Speaker 1: the Philological Society. And like you said, he was the guy.
Speaker 1: He was also the guy who had another ten year
Speaker 1: completion prediction. He said this will take ten years from now.
Speaker 1: And after five years of that ten year prediction, they
Speaker 1: had a through ant.
Speaker 2: No yes, wow. I would just see that and be like,
Speaker 2: well I quit.
Speaker 1: He's like a lot of that was on boarding, you.
Speaker 2: Understand, jeez man, that's crazy. Yeah, But it also goes
Speaker 2: to show how little they actually had gotten done apparently
Speaker 2: under Coleridge's command.
Speaker 1: Ye, and was just they wanted jokes about Grandpa. Come on,
Speaker 1: tell me what was Sammy really like?
Speaker 2: So the one thing that you said, I think from
Speaker 2: the start was that this was a crowdsource project.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's not like the OED makes a secret about this.
Speaker 2: They're very deferential to the volunteers that have worked for
Speaker 2: them over the years because they just could not have
Speaker 2: done this without them. It was just too big of
Speaker 2: an undertaking to for just a small group of people
Speaker 2: to have done by themselves. And there were a lot
Speaker 2: of different people. There's a book out there called The
Speaker 2: Dictionary People.
Speaker 1: What's it about?
Speaker 2: Isn't that what it's called?
Speaker 4: I don't know where is it?
Speaker 2: Yep, The Dictionary People. I think it's fairly new. And
Speaker 2: the author had worked at the OED and before she
Speaker 2: left she had gotten from the archives. She'd come across
Speaker 2: James Murray's address book and it was pretty thick because
Speaker 2: it had the names and addresses of a lot of
Speaker 2: the volunteer correspondents that were working contributing quotations to the Dictionary.
Speaker 2: And so she decided to write a book tracking down
Speaker 2: who these people were, and that's what she came up with,
Speaker 2: this book called The Dictionary People, and she found some
Speaker 2: pretty interesting stuff. For example, about one in six by
Speaker 2: her estimate, were women, including James Murray's wife and daughters.
Speaker 2: He drafted them and got a lot of support and
Speaker 2: help from them. Apparently the editing the OED did not
Speaker 2: pay much, but he had dedicated his life essentially to
Speaker 2: it and his family supported him in that, which was
Speaker 2: pretty great. And a lot of other women contributed to right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the daughter of Karl Marx, Eleanor Marx, contributed and
Speaker 1: it was apparently fired by Murray for not doing the
Speaker 1: assignment properly, not sticking to the assignment. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Sarah ogilvie Is wrote the Dictionary People. Yeah, nice, I'd
Speaker 1: like to check that out. I bet it's a good book. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another writer that Allison found from this book to highlight
Speaker 1: his name Marganita Alaski, who's alive from nineteen fifteen to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. Marganita contributed thirteen thousand quotes to twenty
Speaker 1: Century Supplements and Marginita was a critic and a journalist
Speaker 1: and a novelist and kind of made the rounds on
Speaker 1: TV shows and stuff back in the day, starting in
Speaker 1: the late fifties and into the sixties. And you know,
Speaker 1: when people are volunteering like this, they can sort of
Speaker 1: like guide their like have their own path forward and
Speaker 1: how they want to tackle the project almost and who
Speaker 1: they want to highlight or words they want to highlight.
Speaker 1: And at some point Marginita Alaski got into sort of
Speaker 1: away from the high brow thing and said, I want
Speaker 1: to start, you know, looking at domestic manuals and all
Speaker 1: these old ancient cookbooks and you know, modern news newspapers
Speaker 1: and famous diaries, and just a really unique approach to
Speaker 1: come up with some of those thirteen thousand entries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was a that was a real change. Remember,
Speaker 2: I said that they had really kind of had their
Speaker 2: blinders on just looking for, you know, the pinnacle of
Speaker 2: English literature for quotations. Under James Murray, he was like, no,
Speaker 2: we're gonna not only look for new sources, we're also
Speaker 2: going to include slang. We're gonna include like vulgar words,
Speaker 2: like uh huh. We're like, if it's an English word,
Speaker 2: we're going to include it because we're documenting the entire
Speaker 2: English language. So that was a huge sea change for
Speaker 2: the direction of the dictionary, And apparently he was under
Speaker 2: a tremendous amount of pressure to not to not go
Speaker 2: that way, to kind of stick with the original plan,
Speaker 2: and he said no, he said nine.
Speaker 1: No, he said no, Uh, I mentioned nickers. Is that underwear?
Speaker 1: That's what nickers are, right? Okay, So as soon as
Speaker 1: I said it was like, wait a minute, did I
Speaker 1: say the wrong word?
Speaker 2: You were thinking of Fanny?
Speaker 1: And what's a knickerbocker?
Speaker 2: A knickerbocker is a think. I think it's the short
Speaker 2: pants that were like kind of cinched at the knee
Speaker 2: that you think of with like a little newsboys.
Speaker 1: So the New York Knicks named after the Knickerbockers. That's
Speaker 1: what they were.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they did or not. No, they
Speaker 2: were named after the Knickerbocker, like the story club that
Speaker 2: Washington Irving was a member of.
Speaker 1: Oh really, are you making homposite?
Speaker 2: No, I'm pretty sure that's correct. I sometimes get things wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I well, this is off the dome, so
Speaker 1: I'll look it up.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So back to Murray. He's working with his wife eleven
Speaker 1: kids at his house mainly, and not only at his house,
Speaker 1: but mainly in his little shed that he had built
Speaker 1: behind the house in the garden called the Scriptorium, and
Speaker 1: they worked on it here a once. They got a
Speaker 1: through aunt in eighteen eighty four, he was like, we
Speaker 1: need some help here, so they hired a second editor
Speaker 1: named Henry Bradley, and then not too long after that
Speaker 1: added two more co editors, so you essentially had a
Speaker 1: team of four editors at that point. That we're working
Speaker 1: with teams and teams of people, so a lot of
Speaker 1: people working. Murray at his scriptorium there at home. But
Speaker 1: then he moved to Oxford and built another larger scriptorium
Speaker 1: there behind his house, and things were getting so busy
Speaker 1: the local post put a po box right there by
Speaker 1: his little front driveway, by his sidewalk, and it's still there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look it up, this beautiful red PO box
Speaker 1: with a little placard saying that you know, Murray lived
Speaker 1: here and this was the post to gather these slips
Speaker 1: that helped create the OED.
Speaker 2: I saw, and actually I was obscure that the placard
Speaker 2: doesn't say that. It just says that the guy who
Speaker 2: created the OED lived here. And they just walk right
Speaker 2: past the post office box, so it's literally in front
Speaker 2: of the placard. They don't even mention it.
Speaker 1: The most amazing part of the story.
Speaker 2: It's one of the it's one of the greatest grossest
Speaker 2: government oversights in history, so thousands.
Speaker 1: Of people contributing. At this point, Murray is still beating
Speaker 1: the drum and like writing open letters to newspapers and stuff, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we were still doing this. We you know, trying to
Speaker 1: keep that fire going. And people it wasn't just people
Speaker 1: in England. People from all over the world were contributing.
Speaker 1: And I think when they finally they had so many
Speaker 1: slips because you know, they're filing these as they get
Speaker 1: them alphabetically, they're slotting them in and they have these
Speaker 1: lexicographers working around the clock as well. When they finally
Speaker 1: put out the first supplement in nineteen thirty three, they
Speaker 1: still had one hundred and forty thousand slips left over.
Speaker 2: It's so nuts. Again, I would have been like, well
Speaker 2: I quit. Yeah, it's just too daunting. I can barely
Speaker 2: talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think thirty three, that's the first year they
Speaker 1: have fecially called it the o ED Okay, but.
Speaker 2: Everyone was kind of calling that anyway, were they really yeah,
Speaker 2: okay crazy, So they kind of went with the change.
Speaker 2: The English Language changed the name of the dictionary for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because whatever that long thing, I a new English
Speaker 1: dictionary on historical principles. It was printed by the Oxford
Speaker 1: English Press, so everyone was just calling it that anyway.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I guess it was a sense plus oed.
Speaker 2: Sounds better than the NED, you know. Yeah, sure, do
Speaker 2: you want to take another break and come back and
Speaker 2: talk about arguably the most interesting contributor of all Sure?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: So Murray dies of pleurisy in nineteen fifteen. Did not
Speaker 1: see the first final edition put out, which is very
Speaker 1: sad that would be what thirteen years later, but did
Speaker 1: put out most of the fascicles by that point, just
Speaker 1: wasn't compiled into the one edition. Different people JRR Tolkien
Speaker 1: worked for a year on this in nineteen nineteen. Lots
Speaker 1: of volunteers, but as you promised. Oh and Murray was
Speaker 1: also knighted in nineteen oh eight. I didn't those troubles.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently knighted, but still a bit of an outsider
Speaker 1: in the hoity toity Oxford. You know, Literati always felt
Speaker 1: like an outsider and wasn't even given an honorary degree
Speaker 1: until like the year before he died or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when he walked across the stage, what he
Speaker 2: didn't realize is that one of the faculty had taped
Speaker 2: a kick me signed to his back, so he didn't
Speaker 2: He never understood why the audience is laughing, and he
Speaker 2: grabbed his honorary decree. He was very sad he never
Speaker 2: got it.
Speaker 1: So you promised to talk of the most interesting, perhaps
Speaker 1: most celebrated volunteer, and that is one doctor William Chester Minor.
Speaker 1: If you've seen the movie or read the book The
Speaker 1: Professor and the Madman, the book was by Simon Winchester,
Speaker 1: and the book starred mel Gibson as Murray and Sean
Speaker 1: Penn as the quote unquote Madman Chester Minor. I have
Speaker 1: not seen it. Apparently it's not very good. And mel
Speaker 1: Gibson and the director tried to you know, they didn't
Speaker 1: support the movie in the press, and they tried to
Speaker 1: get their I don't know if get their name removed,
Speaker 1: but they basically disowned it.
Speaker 2: Really, I thought mel Gibson was the one whose movie
Speaker 2: it was, whose idea.
Speaker 1: Well it was his production company, yeah, but he apparently
Speaker 1: he took him to court because he didn't get final
Speaker 1: cut like they said, and he didn't get to shoot
Speaker 1: for a week in Oxford like he wanted to. And
Speaker 1: he's basically like this thing is garbage because you didn't
Speaker 1: let me do what I wanted to. So I'm not
Speaker 1: supporting it. John Ben just what.
Speaker 2: That stinks because apparently the book was just amazing. The
Speaker 2: professor and the Madman, I know.
Speaker 1: And it's such a great story. But I heard other
Speaker 1: people defend it and say, you know, it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: I had great acting, and like he just you know,
Speaker 1: got his knickers in a wad.
Speaker 2: So where the madman is doctor William Chester Minor, you said, right,
Speaker 2: let's references. And the reason that they call him the
Speaker 2: mad man is because at the time he was diagnosed
Speaker 2: with either dementia prey cox or paranoid schizophrenia, and today
Speaker 2: we would call either of those just plain old schizophrenia
Speaker 2: spectrum disorder. But this was the mid nineteenth century and
Speaker 2: doctor Minor was suffering from this at a time when
Speaker 2: they did not understand what they were dealing with. They
Speaker 2: just knew that this guy was pretty bad off and
Speaker 2: needed care essentially for the rest of his life. He
Speaker 2: had started out as a military doctor. I believe he
Speaker 2: graduated from Yale Medical School and entered the Civil War
Speaker 2: as a military doctor pretty much right off the bat.
Speaker 2: And there's some stories about when his symptoms began. Allegedly
Speaker 2: it was from things he was exposed to during his
Speaker 2: time in the Civil War. One is there's a story
Speaker 2: that he supposedly had to brand a deserter, an Irish
Speaker 2: deserter from the Union with a D on his face,
Speaker 2: and that having to do that to that poor man
Speaker 2: just made him snap essentially, or brought his symptoms on
Speaker 2: is a different way to say it. Or he was
Speaker 2: involved in the Battle of the Wilderness outside of Spotsylvania, Virginia.
Speaker 2: Either way, we don't know. We just know that, yes,
Speaker 2: this man definitely had schizophrenia. We don't know how it
Speaker 2: came on or if there was even any trigger, but
Speaker 2: we just kind of join him around the time after
Speaker 2: the Civil War when he's still in the army, but
Speaker 2: he's really starting to show symptoms.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also, by the way, this is how we
Speaker 1: knew that Alison really has the goods as a researcher
Speaker 1: and writer, because Alison was like, hey, be careful with
Speaker 1: his stuff because you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: stories out there, and just don't don't buy up everything
Speaker 1: you're reading here right, music to our ears.
Speaker 2: She also told us how to pronounce right, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's true. The first writer to ever include pronunciation it's nice,
Speaker 1: so like you said. An army doctor, an army surgeon
Speaker 1: working at the US General Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: also a flute player, apparently a very ambitious guy. And
Speaker 1: because of you know, kind of how his schizophrenia played
Speaker 1: out were delusions of persecution, a lot of delusions of
Speaker 1: being attacked sexually, and you know, I think that speaks
Speaker 1: for itself. They got pretty bad, and he apparently would
Speaker 1: wander red light districts of places where he lived. He
Speaker 1: said this is because of his disorder. He was sent
Speaker 1: to an asylum in Washington while he was still in
Speaker 1: the army, although he would get his discharge in eighteen seventy.
Speaker 1: While he was still there, he thought he could get
Speaker 1: better if he went to the UK and get treatment there,
Speaker 1: and so in eighteen seventy two in London, he found
Speaker 1: himself in waking from a delusion that he was being attacked,
Speaker 1: I think sexually attacked by an Irish Republican, and got
Speaker 1: up from bed and ran out to the street like
Speaker 1: guns blazing, thinking he was shooting at his tormentor, and
Speaker 1: killed an innocent man, a brewery worker named George Merritt,
Speaker 1: who was on his way to work that early morning.
Speaker 2: Yes, so that was enough for the British government. He'd
Speaker 2: already been discharged from the army. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you said or not by the time he made it
Speaker 2: to the UK. And in the UK the authorities were like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to introduce you to one of our asylums
Speaker 2: called broad Moore and in Broadmore. This is the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: You did not want to be in an asylum of
Speaker 2: any sort in the nineteenth century. They were horrible, terrible
Speaker 2: places where humans were treated like about as bad as
Speaker 2: humans can be treated. And yet either he was charming
Speaker 2: or wealthy enough, or a combination of both. He was
Speaker 2: able to play his flute, he was able to wear
Speaker 2: his own clothes, go on walks, and very importantly he
Speaker 2: was able to bring his personal library of very rare
Speaker 2: books from the seventeenth and eighteenth century with him, and
Speaker 2: they actually gave him another cell to serve as his
Speaker 2: personal library essentially. And I'll bet Sean Penn playing that
Speaker 2: flute is something to see. I mean that, above anything else,
Speaker 2: is why I want to see that movie.
Speaker 1: It's like in The Anchor Man, he pulls it from
Speaker 1: a sleeve in. Yeah, it's very.
Speaker 3: Fake, Hey aquolog No, no, no.
Speaker 1: Oh no, not again.
Speaker 2: Yep, it just happened.
Speaker 1: He stayed in touch. This is kind of interesting here
Speaker 1: that he did stay in touch with the wife, the
Speaker 1: widow of the man that he killed, and she brought
Speaker 1: him books even, which is amazing and kind of a
Speaker 1: nice ending to that story. Yeah. I don't know the
Speaker 1: ins and outs. Maybe I don't know. Maybe he did
Speaker 1: her a favor. Maybe he was a bad guy.
Speaker 2: No, apparently he wasn't. He was a choking Oh well,
Speaker 2: he apparently contacted her and apologized, made some sort of restitution.
Speaker 2: I took that to mean like gave her some money.
Speaker 2: But she accepted his apologies. She didn't have to do that.
Speaker 2: So I think it says a lot about both of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. When it came to the OED, he
Speaker 1: really poured himself into this as as an avid reader
Speaker 1: and had all those rare books, like you said, but
Speaker 1: didn't do the thing that they said, which was, hey,
Speaker 1: read these books and look for these words. He said, Nope,
Speaker 1: here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna read a book
Speaker 1: at a time, and i'm gonna start I guess it
Speaker 1: says with one letter. I guess he started with the
Speaker 1: letter A and just started looking through all the books
Speaker 1: for all the letter a's, and then again for the
Speaker 1: letter b's, and so on and so on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was a fruitful way to search for
Speaker 2: quotations using specific words, because I think within just a
Speaker 2: couple of years he had generated and sent in between
Speaker 2: five and six thousand slips of quotations to James Murray.
Speaker 2: And as the years went on, no one seems to
Speaker 2: know how many he sent in, but he I mean
Speaker 2: tens and tens of thousands of slips came directly from
Speaker 2: doctor Minor during his time abroad.
Speaker 1: More. Yeah, they eventually met in person. I mean this
Speaker 1: was a relationship to span a couple of decades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hundreds of quotes a week, and they met in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. Finally, apparently the superintendent of the asylum both
Speaker 1: men at his house, and they met a few more
Speaker 1: times after that. I watched the trailer of the movie today,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it
Speaker 1: seems like they'd met here and there over the years.
Speaker 1: And in the book, it was like, you know, mel
Speaker 1: Gibson doing a pretty bad Scottish accent, saying like you
Speaker 1: and I have partners.
Speaker 2: You complete me.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like that, and I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure if that was the real case in real life.
Speaker 2: Well so, apparently from what I saw, James Murray considered
Speaker 2: it just as a decent human being, he needed to
Speaker 2: go support doctor Minor. Whether doctor Minor was contributing or not.
Speaker 2: I think it helped that doctor Minor was contributing, but
Speaker 2: they did have some sort of friendship or relationship, but
Speaker 2: it went beyond just you know, the editor and the
Speaker 2: contributor kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Well maybe it wasn't.
Speaker 2: And supposedly doctor Minor kept like finding excuses anytime James
Speaker 2: Murray was like, well let's meet, you know, I'm just
Speaker 2: across like the city, let's meet for lunch or something,
Speaker 2: and doctor Mom would be like, I can't, you know,
Speaker 2: I broke my foot, or my sister's coming to visit whatever.
Speaker 2: And then finally, I'm not sure how he finally found out,
Speaker 2: either doctor Miner admitted to it or James Murray found
Speaker 2: out somehow, but he finally did find out that he
Speaker 2: was institutionalized, and then he started to go visit him.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, pretty neat and then he saw him off
Speaker 2: after doctor Minor was released from brob Moore so he
Speaker 2: could go back to be institutionalized in America. It was
Speaker 2: clear that he wasn't going to be around too many
Speaker 2: more years. James Murray saw him off at the docks
Speaker 2: and gave him six unpublished volumes of the first edition
Speaker 2: that hadn't come out yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a very sad end to a sad life.
Speaker 1: He had those delusions of being sexually violated, and in
Speaker 1: December nineteen oh two, he tied a tourniquet around his
Speaker 1: penis and he cut it off in what he called
Speaker 1: in the interests of morality, because what he believed is
Speaker 1: that he had delusions that he was being taking out
Speaker 1: of the asylum for years and years at night and
Speaker 1: forced to have sex with women all around the asylum
Speaker 1: and in town. And so he cut his penis off.
Speaker 1: And after that, things really just weren't the same for him.
Speaker 1: It seems like things went pretty downhill pretty quickly, although
Speaker 1: he died in nineteen twenty so that was, you know,
Speaker 1: another eighteen years of suffering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as his contributions, that really went downhill
Speaker 2: after that.
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, very sad, but super super interesting story and
Speaker 1: great job Allison. This was really really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, Alison. This is great, great start.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the team. And what Chuck? Since I said
Speaker 2: welcome to the team, do you think it's time for
Speaker 2: listener now?
Speaker 1: I think so?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to call this cost of goods?
Speaker 1: In that episode? What episode was it where you're talking
Speaker 1: about the cost of goods?
Speaker 2: I think the Harlem Globetrotters is where it recently came from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, wwhy is it so expensive to go to
Speaker 1: NBA game these days or get a meal or whatever?
Speaker 1: We had a lot of people that write in, so
Speaker 1: I don't think we even settled on a final point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still looking around.
Speaker 1: There were a few different theories, but this one from
Speaker 1: Matt I'm going to read, Hey, guys, I have a
Speaker 1: partial explanation for the question why does it cost so
Speaker 1: much more for a nice meal than it used to
Speaker 1: even adjusting for inflation? Bal mal bauml bal Mal's cost
Speaker 1: disease might help explain. This refers to the rising costs
Speaker 1: associated with service or labor intensive industries over time, despite
Speaker 1: no corresponding increase in productivity. So imagine a restaurant in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, you have a server, take your order,
Speaker 1: chef cooks of food, someone else cleans up after you're done.
Speaker 1: Fast forward to today. Despite all the technological advances, you
Speaker 1: still need that server stake the order. You still need
Speaker 1: the chef, You still need the staff to clean. The
Speaker 1: humans have not been replaced by machines or software. In
Speaker 1: a lot of these cases, you can't speed up the
Speaker 1: chef the way you can double the speed of a
Speaker 1: factory machine without sacrificing quality. So if you own a restaurant,
Speaker 1: you still need roughly the same number of workers that
Speaker 1: you've had that you needed in the fifties. Roughly, Yet
Speaker 1: wages for the staff have gone up over the years.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other rabbit hole. The restaurant has to
Speaker 1: pay its staff more over time without getting more meals
Speaker 1: per worker. So what do you do You pass it
Speaker 1: on to the customers. By the way, this also explains
Speaker 1: why stuff like health insurance and childcare have also gotten
Speaker 1: way more expensive relative to other stuff. You still need
Speaker 1: the same number of daycare workers per kid and nurses
Speaker 1: per patient that you did in past decades. This was
Speaker 1: a good one, Matt we got some other ideas and
Speaker 1: imagine it's kind of all these things probably, but balml's
Speaker 1: cost disease is a great explanation. And that is from
Speaker 1: Matt Farmer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, Matt, though, was a good one.
Speaker 2: It's the whole thing's brewing. I don't know what it's
Speaker 2: going to turn into. That will definitely be part of it,
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a Josh Clark solo ten part series The Cost
Speaker 1: of Goods with Josh Clark.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. No, no, I'm going to make
Speaker 2: you do it with me.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no no. So that was from Matt right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Matt Farmer.
Speaker 2: Matt Farmer, thank you very much for that. And if
Speaker 2: you want to be like Matt Farmer and show off
Speaker 2: your braininess and try to answer a burning question we have.
Speaker 2: We love that kind of thing. You can send it
Speaker 2: to us via email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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