Category Archives: Lexicography

OED Gender Genre

In “Sex in the OED” I  ran through some figures on female vs male representation in OED quotation evidence, comparing the original OED1 with the later Supplements that resulted in OED2. Here I look a little closer at what kinds of works by women the two editions tended to cite. Below are two charts breaking […]

08.12.2016 – 10:05 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Burchfield’s Reach-Backs

The vast majority of the quotation evidence in Robert Burchfield’s OED Supplements comes from after the first (1928) edition was completed. The median date for these is 1944, whereas for the first edition it’s 1742. However, in some circumstances the Supplements did reach back into periods already covered by OED1 — if it could antedate […]

06.12.2016 – 10:59 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Sex in the OED

Two subprojects concerning OED quotation metadata are now near enough to complete to present some preliminary results. They concern the sex of the authors quoted in the OED, in both the first edition (1928) and the later Supplements (1933, 1972-86). The most focused work on this question so far has been Baigent, Brewer, and Larminie, […]

02.12.2016 – 17:21 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Entitled Professor

I happen to have an interest and a certain amount of expertise in words that mean their own opposites. You might say I’m qualified to post here on that topic. You might even say I’m entitled to my opinion on a wider range of things in which I’m not necessarily expert. But if you call […]

23.11.2016 – 12:31 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography | Comments (0)

Guest Post: A Winter-Evening Conference and the Problem of Genre

Cosmin Dzsurdzsa is well into his first full-time co-op term as a research assistant at The Life of Words. Here he tells us about a case that seemed to challenge every classification rule we developed. What is “genre”? This is a question I constantly find myself asking as an RA here at The Life of […]

06.06.2016 – 11:47 | By VCD | Posted in Lexicography | Comments (0)

Guest Post: Moving from 2.0 to 3.0

Danielle Griffin recently completed her co-op term as a full-time research assistant at The Life of Words. Here she offers some thoughts about her work on identifying the textual genre of quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary: When I started my job as an RA, Dr. Williams had me tagging quotations five days a week […]

02.06.2016 – 09:35 | By DBG | Posted in Lexicography, Poetry | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Last Day to Submit a Poem for the 2016 Poetry Contest

Today is the last day for Ontario secondary school students to submit a poem to The Life of Words Poetry Competition 2016. Keep your eye on the contest page for upcoming news, and for eventual publication of The Life of Words Anthology 2016, which will print the winning entry and all honourable mentions. We’re received […]

15.04.2016 – 06:36 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Poetry | Comments (0)

How did OED Supplements Supplement?

There has always been an interest in the changing editorial practice within and between various editions of the Oxford English Dictionary. Recently some scholars have complained that changing electronic interfaces are making it impossible to distinguish what edition a particular definition or quotation is coming from. See, e.g., Charlotte Brewer, “OED Online Re-launched: Distinguishing old […]

04.04.2016 – 09:58 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Life of Words Poetry Competition

Good news for Ontario secondary school students who like words: The Life of Words is announcing the first in what will be an annual poetry competition, in which we invite submissions of poems about words and reward excellence with some pretty great prizes. Here is the competition web page, where we’ll post links, news, and […]

22.03.2016 – 15:49 | By D-AW | Posted in Etymology, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Bowie on OED

It’s a day for sharing David Bowie quotations on the social medias. One in particular just crossed my path: I presume the person who wrote out, photographed, and posted this little tidbit (making sure to draw attention to their book store’s own social media outposts) found it among the collected Bowie quotations on some “famous […]

11.01.2016 – 14:48 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Poetry | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)