Dear Commons Community,
I have just finished reading Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) by Lynda Mugglestone.. This is the third book I have read about the OED this year. See: https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2025/05/27/book-the-meaning-of-everything-by-simon-winchester/ and https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2025/04/23/new-book-the-dictionary-of-lost-words-by-pip-williams/
Lost for Words…was published in 2005 and is meant as a scholarly treatment of the topic. It took me a while to read its 200-plus pages. Ms. Mugglestone does a fine job of explaining its history with many details that require very careful reading and rereading. Regardless, I found it interesting and am glad that I stuck with it. Because it was published twenty years ago finding a review was difficult. Below are three brief comments about the book courtesy of Goodreads.
Tony
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Goodreads
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) holds a cherished position in English literary culture. The story behind the creation of what is indisputably the greatest dictionary in the language has become a popular fascination. This book looks at the history of the great first edition of 1928, and at the men (and occasionally women) who distilled words and usages from centuries of English writing and “through an act of intellectual alchemy captured the spirit of a civilization.”
The task of the dictionary was to bear full and impartial witness to the language it recorded. But behind the immaculate typography of the finished text, the proofs tell a very different story. This vast archive, unexamined until now, reveals the arguments and controversies over meanings, definitions, and pronunciation, and which words and senses were acceptable—and which were not.
Lost for Words examines the hidden history by which the great dictionary came into being, tracing—through letters and archives—the personal battles involved in charting a constantly changing language. Then as now, lexicographers reveal themselves vulnerable to the prejudices of their own linguistic preferences and to the influence of contemporary social history.
A pleasant, thoroughly researched and very dense book on the O.E.D., which I would solely recommend to specialists, wordsmiths and people with a fervent, not passing, interest in the development of the dictionary as we know it today.
Intense and written with authority and passion by a woman who knows her subject. The research is mind boggling. I absolutely recommend this for anyone who truly loves books and language studies. It’s not an easy read, for sure, but well worth the effort if you are a lover of libraries as I am.
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