Hello again and welcome back to Britain under the Microscope. Hello Anlan.
Hello, everybody.
So Anlan, actually being an English teacher, a lot of students would ask me, oh, Lulu, can you recommend a good English dictionary? It's difficult for me because I use a range of different dictionaries. But I always remember my first dictionary is Oxford dictionary.
Oh, yeah, the Oxford English dictionary.
Yeah, I have it at home, actually.
I don't think you have the one that I am gonna be talking about though.
What do you mean? It says Oxford English dictionary.
What you're talking about is the concise version. In today's episode, what we're gonna be talking about is the real version, the long version.
I imagine that is much, much larger than my one.
Yes, the Oxford English dictionary is the largest English dictionary in the world.
Oh, really. So was the original aim to actually to record every word there is in English speaking country?
Yes. So the aim was not just every English word that's used nowadays, but every English word that was ever used in the past as well.
Wow. Yeah, I can imagine the size now, but how did it actually begin and when did it begin and who, like commissioned it?
Well it was commissioned by Oxford University and work began on the dictionary in 1857.
1857. I'm wondering how long it took them to put the book together.
Originally it was meant to take ten years. It took seventy years to finish.
70 years.
Seventy years.
So, I can't imagine, so does that mean some people devote their entire life just to make this dictionary? So people working full time just on this one dictionary.
Some people working full time, but they actually relied on volunteers to complete the work.
Oh, volunteers. How many volunteers were involved?
Around two thousand.
What did they actually do? Did they just write individual entries?
What they used to do was, they used to write the individual entry, but also write what they call a quotation slip.
A quotation slip.引语 Is that about how like sample sentences?
Yeah. So on that little slip of paper, they used to write a sentence to show how the word is used. So they used to get these from newspapers or books, and it's actually a very good way of learning words. That's what we would say to our students.
Yeah, exactly.
Use in a sentence.
Always use in a sentence, always learn in a context. So I would imagine these volunteers they have to be screened, they have to be very academic because he can't just allow anyone to do that work.
Well, not necessarily. One of the most famous volunteers was actually a convicted murderer.
A criminal?
He was a criminal, he was a murderer, and he was actually crazy, and he lived in a lunatic asylum.
So he was in a … well back then, a madhouse.
He was criminally insane.
Ah, I'm really now curious to see the entries that he put in.
Oh, he was actually one of the best ones apparently.
Yeah. I mean there's always a thin line between being mad and being a genius. And another thing that I would imagine is to put together such a huge dictionary, working seventy years to complete it; it takes a lot of organization. I bet it is hugely organized. It's not a work that someone like me can do. I'm not very organized.
It was actually incredibly chaotic.
So not organized.
Not at all. So for example, all the words that started with "pa" actually went missing. And they were only found in Ireland twelve years later.
So were these manuscripts?
These were all the quotation slips.
Oh, so someone just misplaced them.
Well, misplaced them and took them to another country. And the same thing happened with "H". All the entries beginning with "H" were later found in Italy.
The entire "H" section.
Yeah.
To think that they put in so much effort, they could have been more careful with how they store these things.
Well, in the end, it actually helped because they got a new editor; a man called Dr. James Murray became the editor.
Was he more organized?
Well he was a genius. He was fluent in around twenty-two languages.
Twenty-two languages!
He was very famous for having a long beard. And you look at the photos he looks a lot like Gandalf, he looks a lot like a wizard.

So I guess that was his life. He probably didn't have many friends.
Well, he did actually gather people together in a place called Scriptorium.
The Scriptorium, like script.
Yeah.
Is this where they used to write up dictionary entries?
Well, this was where all the editors would gather, and they would try to compile the dictionary. But it's called a scriptorium. It was actually his shed in his garden.
The scriptorium, it makes it sound so much fancier. So what, these people were just crouching in the shed and talking about dictionary entries. Sounds like a fun Saturday night.
Well, that's what they were doing for around seventy years.
Wow.
So it's actually completed in 1928 finally.
Finally! And how big was it?
It's was made up of ten volumes with 15,490 pages.
15,490 pages, no wonder you were saying I don't have it at home. But one thing with dictionary is though that a lot of the words, because language is forever evolving. Some of the words, if it took seventy years for them to complete the dictionary, by the time it was completed, some of the words and expressions would have gone out of date.
Oh yeah. When they finished it was already out of date. So they had to create a new edition straight away.
Another seventy years to go.
Thankfully it took a little bit quicker than seventy years.
I guess with modern technology now, it's going to make that, the whole updating, creation of new editions much easier.
Yeah. And because of the modern technology and everything, it's only really now available online.
Oh, so you cannot buy paper based, printed version?
Uh, you can, but they are very expensive, and also they take up loads and loads of room.
Perhaps they keep them in libraries.
Some of them do, some you can still see some versions, but with it being online is, it's constantly being updated.
Um, I guess that's one thing though, I'm really curious, for a dictionary as gigantic as Oxford dictionary, how many words are there?
Well, you remember I was saying it's constantly being updated; it is actually quite difficult to say because I dare say it's being updated right now. So it's around six hundred thousand words.
Six hundred thousand words. Actually nowadays you can go on to the official website of Oxford English dictionary and they have a lot of articles. They have a lot of words studies. They also really are keeping up to date with some of the new words, internet based words and they have word of the year.
Oh yeah. They have to, because every single year about two thousand to five thousand new words are added.
And there are specific people who are doing that I guess, people who still keep on writing the dictionary.
Just not in the shed any more.
Hopefully not, hopefully not in a … at least in a larger shed.
So here's a very quick test for you, quick question for you. What do you think is the longest entry? So which word in English has the longest entry?
I would say, if we're talking about longest entry, it would be a very, very simple word. My guess would be a very simple word, because then it's very versatile. It has many meanings and entries. I would also say it's probably a verb, because verbs are, they have more changes.
Yeah.
I don't know. Is it like very simple words like do or go or make?
Well, it's actually the verb set.
S E T.
Yeah.
Set. And how long is that entry?
A set has four hundred and thirty different definitions.
Four hundred and thirty different definitions.
And the explanation of it is around sixty thousand words.
Wow, I don't think I would have, even though I love reading dictionaries, I don't think I have the patience to read all of the definitions for set.
Not many people do.
But it's fun. I mean reading dictionaries and learning from dictionaries can be really fun. By the way, this Oxford dictionary we spend a whole episode talking about it, it is just English to English, is not to other languages.
No.
Um so what do you think, Anlan, as a fellow language learner, also as a language teacher, what do you think of the method of learning a language by reading some of the dictionary entries and using English to English dictionary?
I personally think that using English to English dictionary is the best way of going about it. And I'm, I know it's a little bit old fashioned but I actually believe it's the best way to learn from a paper dictionary.
Um. Why? Is it just because of the effort that you have to put in?
Well, not just the effort, but it's also the fact that on a paper dictionary you can make notes and sometimes when you're looking up a word you find another word, and there are loads and loads of dictionaries available. And for any English learner, you can also use learner dictionaries as well.
Yes. Like Collins, they have quite famous learner dictionary.
Or Longman as well, and also Cambridge, the Cambridge website has its own learner dictionary as well.
Great, so learner English to English dictionary is perhaps the way to go. Actually some of my old learner dictionaries, I still have all these notes and post-it. So thank you very much for coming on the show again and to share with us all these interesting facts about Oxford English dictionary.
So if you're using an English to English dictionary at the moment, what dictionary are you using? Can you recommend it to us?
We can't wait to hear from you. We'll see you next time.
Bye.
Bye.

更多英语资讯，获取节目完整文本，请关注微信公众号：璐璐的英文小酒馆。每天大量英语干货更新！