it's virulently intolerant not only of other religions but also of different strains of islam like shiite is him . just like its predecessor al qaeda in iraq does. >> i think it was a different narrative coming out of the trunk land. >> what will that narrative be in terms of fighting here? >> i'm not going to want to speak for general flynn area the narrative is going to be, this war is not over. consequently, what you see on what president obama has done in the last year, he's talking about isis is the jv team of terrorism. he's not talking that way anymore. he's talking two years ago, he's now talking about a generational struggle. if anyone was reluctant to put that back in president obama but he did it because he realized what a threat isis was. he's frozen the troop withdrawals from afghanistan because the taliban is coming

back so i think there's a general consensus now this conflict is generational, it's a different kind of conflict it's not one where you can say you can walk away fromthis because we want . the enemy, this enemy has decided to keep fighting. >> you can watch this and other programsonline at booktv.org . >>. [inaudible conversation] hello everyone. thank you so much for coming out tonight. i'm part of the event staff here and on behalf of the staff and our owners we are honored to welcome you to host john simpson for his book the word detectives.

searching for it all at the meeting of the oxford dictionary and a few housekeeping notes for us to get started. take out the cell phones and noisemaking devices and silence those at this time so we don't have any unnecessary interruption, that would be great. we will also mention that we are on book tv is here today and they will be filming the event and we are doing our own reporting as well so john is going to come us about a half hour we will have another half hour for questions and answers and we haven't microphone here, please make your way there when you have a question so that you can see yourself on tv and the famous. but really that's the only housekeeping notice. after the event is over, if you will help us . we put the bookstore back together so if you will take your chair and folded up and lean it against something started . also, the books are available

to purchase at the cash register. if you haven't already done so and after the signing will immediately follow right here. so can you drink a glass of balderdash, what you call that plastic can't scratch and if serendipitously you find yourself in serendipity, where are you? the answers to all of these questions integrate many more are found in the pages of the oxford english dictionary, the definitive record of the englishlanguage and there's no better guy for the dictionaries many wonderment than the former editor of the oed , john simpson and "the word detective" is a memoir and joyful celebration of english. it weaves a story of how words come into being and sometimes how culture shapes the language used and how technology has informed not only the way we speak and write but how words are made.

kirkus reviews says it's a witty memoir from a editor which insists he is not a quote, word lover. a captivating celebration of the life among words. john simpson is the chief editor of the oxford english dictionary for three years until 2016 and during his tenure he managed the digitization of the dictionary and initiated its third edition schedule in 2037. overseeing some 70 editors at the time. john is an american fellow of the college and writes research on lexicon, literary and historical issues. he now edits the james joyce online notes and has three word projects in shelton made. join me in welcoming john simpson. [applause] >> good evening. i never had this many enrollment one time but i'm used to being on the streets of london. i'm just on my own so what i've done is i've taken this,

he's called hugo, he's not my publisher. he's a sort of amalgam of what this use to be like in the old days. he's calledhugo. welcome to everyone . welcome to everyone. i'm absolutely delighted that so many people have come along tonight to celebrate the publication of john's book, much of which i have already read on the train. i've asked john a few questions about the words and i hope those of you who have not yet read it to the end will get an impression of why i am told we are so keen to publish it. john, you spent many years working on the oxford english dictionary. why did you write this memoir and how does it ever from other accounts of the oed? and he hands it over to me. i read the word detective because i've read so many books about the history of the oed, the problems between

the editors and the publishing staff, all the difficulties of the 19th century, getting these together, it's a massive book, massive project. though actually that misses the fun of writing, documenting the history of words which is what it is all about. what i all i was trying to do was infuse people to enjoy writing about the history and researching the history of their language. people ask how i came to write the book and is pretty straightforward. about six months before i left the university press in oxford in 2013, for some reason the press department put out a press release to say i was leaving. secretly, i think they were just very pleased area but anyway, i don't know why they did this but they put out a press release and media got a hold of it and they ran

stories like the o.e.d. chief word detective leaves after 36 years sothat's where i got the idea of "the word detective" from . and then i did use "time magazine" as an interview for me and that was an instrumental interview. it was a question and answer and it made me sound interesting. so many journalists coming to the o.e.d. and they come alongwith preconceptions of us in long white beard , rural males and we spend our time staring at our desks writing out little index card with definitions on them and there's so much that's not true but it's a stereotype of lexicography which i was trying to avoidby writing the book . and as a result of that, a few days later i got a phone call from david to their new york literary agent same i

thought you were quite interesting as you came over in the time magazine piece . you think of any point in thinking ofwriting a book about your experiences ? and maybe we can take it around and publish it and see what they think. i said i'm far too busy at the moment. i got very important work, i can't do that unless talk about it when i finish so six months later i was finally out the door and i thought well, let's give it a try, let's see if we can make dictionary work sound fun to people. the stereotypes of something that have dogged me throughout my 37 years on the o.e.d. and in the introduction to the book, i wrote a little piece about the sort of stereotyping that we get in books and films.

i was talking about the excitement of writing dictionaries. this is a specific kind of excitement. it's different from the dramatic excitement portrayed in all the fire, my favorite film about reference works. i try to play in a people's comedy to groups of summer schoolers i thought years ago. i expect they thought it was the best part of the course. in the film, the erudite looking gary cooper is a grammarian. i'm sure you can remember the film and he and his editors were engaged in the noble task of writing an encyclopedia. the professors led quiet lives quite unfit to the vibrant work of dictionary editing. in particular, they are unfamiliar with the vocabulary of the dive book in the hubcaps as would have it, gary cooper stumbled across barbara stanwyck disguised as a nightclub singer sugarbush o'shea and he and his fellow editors rather take a shine to her. they sneak out at night to listen to her vocabulary at the nightclub.

gary cooper goes and add slang to the encyclopedia and sugarbush is eventually rescued from numerous potential mishaps by the kindly hearted editors. these are not exactly how things worked on the o.e.d.. we never knowingly employed anyone named sugarbush. so it's sort of a stereotype but it does indicate what i felt in the work when i was working there and so in the book there are sort of four main aspects that i wanted to draw into. the reason i wanted to write the book was a book of the questions about words. the interesting things i found out about words and how i approach them and dictionary writers always have to come up with words on the side. never confront them head on because you don't find anything if you confront them head on. you look at the strange aspects, you're looking at how people use words in the park.

you're trying to push you read a sentence from the 17th century text, you are trying to push it out of shape so that it helps you to understand the definition of the actual word you are working on and it's a strange way of looking at things but i always like to look at things sideways rather than front on. i wanted to talk about the language, how exchanged over the time i was at the dictionary. the book more or less starts when i apply for the job and i finish it today so there's no early life while i was at school, i had a lovely time, whatever. nothing like that. unfortunately, maybe that will be in volume 2, the people but it starts with applying for a job and finding the job in the dictionary . there's a bit about my life, my friends in the dictionary, friends outsidethe dictionary, my family . i interweave that with a think about 60 boxes about

words where i take a word like paraphernalia or 101 as a kind of class you ticket college and track the history of that overtime as far as the o.e.d. is able to demonstrate it. because any word in the language is interesting if you do a little bit of research about it and write it up. but i talk about the language generating at the time outside the dictionary, how we wrote the dictionary in book form, the dictionary on computer which is what it is now and how we were opening up access to the people to read the dictionary by putting it online over a long period. john, that is a very huge

book. that's a very convincing answer. i read the odd stances on the train up here and i was impressed at the style and you talked about how you confronted writing as a formal and revered document as the oxford english dictionary. perhaps you would like to read a short section to give us a flavor of the book. when i first went into the o.e.d. i hadn't been at oxford before. i've been at your studying english and it was quite a forbidding place. and i think at the time oxford scholarships was something that was held in all and it was quite difficult for people, especially new editors to unravel that, to see through what was actually there, what we were trying to do which was really to explain the meaning and history of words. part of the first years i was

there was really getting myself into what the dictionary was trying to do and sort of becoming less in all when i went through this procedure. to give you some idea of what it was like as a new editor, i thought i'd read a bit from the book about my first interview at the university press. i've been living in redding about 15 miles away and i had an na there and i didn't think it was going to fit me for too much in the world and then yes, it was great. because we always find that people with a media full background actually are well-suited to looking at words but back in the medieval period into the old english. and up to the present day, if

you were going to have a history of anything about language in the 19th century, you find it with issues to deal with 15th, 17th century media full recovery so you did in the end turn out to be useful to have that sort of background. i've been called in the interview and the university press porter let me into the grand quadrangle or court. before i had a chance to read the sumptuous law i was directed off to one side. he didn't get to experience the full splendor of the place unless you deserved it and i found the personnel department and my correspondent occurred. the colonel was the human face of the department of the o.e.d. in those days. it was a delightful military chap, retired of course and coming of the left over from the days when old soldiers rolled personnel. he was more closely a characteractor , colonel pickering of my fair lady. white shorts, chatty and a military antenna. we shook hands and then he

sank into his seat behind the substantial desk where i was directed to an easy chair designed principally to make you feel you weren't the most important person in the room. we talked about the magnificent history of the university press through the eyes of the personnel department and we wonder jointly how easy i might find it from writing to oxford, fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity. the distance between the two places at 25 miles away discovered much later that there were people in oxford just a few hundred feet outside the old city walls. the sun rises over worcester, worcester college that is, it wouldn't be much point in referring to the cyclicals here but i went on my interview with him and then at the dictionary department i meet with a few credits here and i'll leave you where i got the joke off. but i'm trying not to write a

sort of book where you go from footnote to footnote discussing the particular policies and all that sort of thing and i was really just trying to write an approachable, i reasonably entertaining book about my time at the o.e.d. and we will get to the words in a few minutes. john, it's me. it's not somebody else. that's a very convincing argument. it's great when you are in charge of your script. i told all my editors that "the word detective", the text of educational snippets of english, this is true. yes, i've already explained that what i wanted to do was to take words. there are so many books about language that sort of take

the well-known examples of words and take you through them. if you read any history of english, you will find descriptions of the words in all the other histories of english and when what i wanted to do was wheni had written something , a paragraph that i thought was of interest i would check in the o.e.d., think what the story was and write it out from my perspective. but with the facts that are in the o.e.d.. so on the one hand i was showing you the detail the o.e.d. holds but also trying to approach it in a way that was readable because it's quite a difficult dictionary to read sometimes. if you are not familiar with it. and for my example of one of the books that transpired, i don't know if you're familiar with the origin of the meeting transpire but it's one of those word boxes that describe individual words so if you will go with me on this, we will see what happens in transpire.

i've got, i don't know, on the box and box, all sorts of things that are quite fun. and in the mid-to-late 18th century the verb transpire cause no end of arguments to otherwise healthy individuals. there were people who think the word should mean what use to me. any deviation from this is heresy . the nice is somehow still related in its origin to the nesting of ignorance or that logic is any argument of a word from the freq photos, a word. transpire at least a cruise has a literal meaning in classical latin but over the centuries, english speakers have used the technical word and mangled this. the word transpire is known in english from the latter end of the 16th century and it drives from latin trans there are a, trans as an across and spit robbery as in to be, spiritist, etc. it's expected to mean the transmission by breathing. here's how the o.e.d. views that old meeting.

they were first asked in a state of paper through the walls or surface of the body, especially they get off or discard waste matter from the body was been. so that's the old meaning of the word. what we nowadays think of as transpire, as we move through the 17th century, the range of context in which the term could be employed rose at the core meaning remains constant , desperation comes into it frequently, liquid passing from inside to outside. itturned out to be a useful word in the emerging sciences , almost heading for stardom. most hiccup on the road to immortality occurred in 1748, lord chesterfield who has a style leader later annoyed by the strong support fromhis proposed dictionary with noble lord realized it was very off plan . the language changes and wasn't necessarily aging nearer to perfection and the dictionary should be over

this. in 1748, the lord chesterfield ironically and despite his general calls on language change is guided to use the word transpire in a figurative way. the french trans., when writing his correspondence. this is what he wrote. that confidence which i placed in you, that you will therefore not let one word of it transpire. there's nothing wrong with that should you be the person who finds things wrong with language and the french had developed at this early in the 18th century. what lord chesterfield was saying is that it is not one word, one word in the contents of linear from this current, secret private state through the public view. the development from the philippine transportation is easy and unexceptional. the way he came to address the word in his dictionary rather pompously found even this minor semantic shift too much. lately innovated from france without necessity.

what happened next set language theorists into a decline. according to the o.e.d., it was an american lady, abigail adams, wife of the second president of theunited states was writing in 1775 to her husband at the continental congress . there is nothing new transpiring since i wrote you last area and i'm sure others missed it before she did but at the moment she has all the credit. they hated this new meaning to occur, to happen. one known pure permutation or any permutation and transmigration of the loosest variety and a sense of something moving from one state, nothing happening, to another state, something happening. organic change like this shouldn't happen in a polite 18th century salon. the fact that it might well be americans and americans are not really on anyone's dance card in 1775. somebody made the language even less popular in britain

that might have been. the first edition of the o.e.d. in the early, latter 20th century despair. it is a misuse. the dictionary offers some assistance. evidence arising from misunderstanding must have transpired during his absence, he did not know.we should say this a rather enigmatic way of describing something. in the seven years, he has following in the footsteps of others such as the american was to wrote in1850, this novel use of the word is common in the united states , nor does it appear to be uncommon in england though it has been repeatedly censured by judicious credits here and there as improper. it doesn't work too much, it transpires. sorry, i have to transpire freely.

the one question i'm always asked and have been asked every day since 1976 is how does a new word get into the dictionary? and in the old days, before the internet, we had a short answer and we said to people if we have in our card files private examples or five examples of a sense of the word spanning a five year time span then we consider putting it into the dictionary and then the internet came in because you could get 10,000 examples of misspellings you can use that as an example. i wouldn't mind putting this many in dictionary because we are not trying to prescribe people should use the language, we are going to say we are going to monitor the language and say here's how it's used. but we will sometimes say this is nonstandard if we think maybe people need to be worn off using it as part of their main answer or something. so new words nowadays find

their way into the o.e.d., there are any other transitional dictionaries, you are looking for several thousand , 20,000, 30,000 hits on google for example but we didn't just use this sort of checklist. we used all sorts of databases and criteria and we have sort of a balancing act of whether we put in air quotes or not standard definitions as an expression or air guitar or whatever. so we look through all sorts of sources but in general it's going to be in widespread use either in widespread common use or widespread use within a particular time in physics or geography or something before it gets considered to go into the o.e.d. and once it's in the oed, it stays there. it's not a dictionary that throws things out, it expands. the first edition of the dictionary was 10 volumes long and that wascompleted in 1928 . but seven volumes was too bulky so that was rebound in

a reissue as 12 volumes. we prepared a one volume which expanded into a four volume set so if you are keeping up with the math, we had 16 volumes. we thenreleased a second edition in 1989 with new material it was then 20 volumes . and then we went through the process of working out whether we could digitize it but i will get to that in a minute. new words, there's a nice new word skating which we put into the dictionary i think in the 1990s. it's a kind of caribbean dance, muskeg. i don't know whether you would know it or anyone wants to demonstrate area but we had a lot of index cards sent in by readers all around the world which is how we used to reflect in those days and now

they are encouraged to send it in electronically so that it gets into our database but we have enough evidence of the word skating to want to put it into the dictionary and none of our workers seemed to know what it meant. we did at the time have a popular culture consultant and i thought i was the popular culture consultant when i was joining the dictionary at the age of 24 so they thought i was the eyes and ears on the streets of the dictionary. even though i had taken a great interest in 1976 when they had all the words from these two areas of the o.e.d., i got hold of all sorts of magazines and read them and carded them and put the index cards in our files unsuspecting that i'll have to put these words into the dictionary. but it never really worked because the o.e.d. has other ways of collecting

information so on our radio program, television program we had a british performance poet called benjamin zephaniah, i don't know if you've heard of him over here. he's well-known in the uk so i made myself unpopular as we often do by asking him to define the word skating or skating for me. and he gave me a very funny look when i asked him as people often do and he said you'll have to get used to it if you are a lexmark kager for and he said well, i can tell you what it means.i thought maybe he didn't want to let the term from caribbean west indian culture see out into the o.e.d. and the open to the world but i think hegenuinely didn't , had never thought about it before and didn't have the

cavity needed for skanking and he said nexttime he was in oxford , or when he was performing on the other side of oxford probably he would come into the office and would skank for me and i could get my notes by that and write a definition so true enough, he did about a month or so ago. i got a performance in bristol and i come through oxford and i will skank for you in your office.this was going on because i thought i might get put taken upstairs and put into a locked room but he came up and we cleared an area in front of my desk and it was looking out onto one of the main streets into oxford, you had sort of this festival display of it. he cleared an area and he stood there and he didn't seem embarrassed at all.

i haven't got music, sorry. i'm not west indian either. but eventually he got into it and he started skanking and he said it's a bit like cleaning windows. i can't do it. anyway, he got into it and i told him what ithought it was all about . but eventually he stops, he's a little stiff and probably a bit embarrassed but he had to go through his real performance that day and left me with the job ofwriting the definition . so that was the only time i've ever actually asked him to demonstrate a definition for me but i thought well, the definition is in the dictionary now , if you want to look at it, you're welcome to and you know, that was one of the new words that got into the dictionary.he's a bit clumsy, hugo. that's a very convincing answer. i think we all know the story about how the original skanking was written.

elizabeth murray's caught in the web of words. >> "making of the oed, recent book about he history of the oed to the present but you were there when the decision was taken to put the oedy online in how did that come about? >> well, originally putting the o -- the idea of putting the oed on line in the 1980s, was -- we didn't know where the dictionary was going to do. it was a printed dictionary. we produced -- just about finished processing a 25-year project for a supplement to the dictionary. we produced these four volumes. didn't have the hard to do another set of supplements on top of these supplements and it was a nightmare, would the oed be left toes illize --

fossilize. and some had the idea that this new fang eled technology in computers could do something for the dictionary. the idea that maybe that will help us if we could manage to put the dictionary on to computer, maybe that would be the future of it. it was very, very risky project at the time. we were one of -- we were one of the standard generalized market of language of the people who managed the standard coding for these little things and we were one of this pet projects ball we were such a big project. we're not big data these days but we were at the time. so, we were very popular amongst academic researchers, as a guinea pig. all at the same time a human jean nome project and big ideas how we can understand language

if we put the oed on a computer and it will solve our problems. never really worked but we wouldn't tell them at the time elm maybe it wouldn't. we then developed the project to put at the dictionary on computer. there's a nice little bit in here about what we were losing by doing that. one event that happened at this time in mid-80s, that symbolized two things. firstly the way were shuffling off the old ways of printing and a worrying attitude held in part of oxford towards the icons of the past. two of my colleague and me joined one of the educationam visits made from time to time by oxnard -- oxford editors in

those days the oldest printing machine was two stories tile but the massive -- sheet after sheet. it was a very impressive site. swept bibi the new technology. we were walking with our group long a narrow coroner when we came across an old man throwing squares of metal into a roaring furnace. on further investigation, it appeared this was not some job creation scheme but part of the recycling initiative. huge store rooms had been stocked with the printing plates them plates were worn and were recycled to be melted down and reused. to our alarm, discovered that the heavy copperplates that the old man was committing to the

inferno were printing plates to print the oed, needless to say jed and i were horrified by what seem be to the wilful destruction of the dictionary's history. our commercial directar was also shocked as he shared our concerns and cheerly lamented he clearly moments at the loss of the heritage. we salvage what we could. to recoup revenue we sold through the university press. the use of the word inferno then which and i will carry on,n, initiates the word inferno which is you would think that the bee a very open but the word that came in through dante's inferno. earlier we had infernal from

french from the middle ages so we all then infernal was but it doesn't find his link to english except to the reference of dante's work in the middle of 18th century. i think i'm going to be quiet soon. i've got various things i could say but i think probably the best thing to do is if i don't. [laughter] >> john, that's a very convincing answer. all good things must come to an end. it's a paradox perhaps. >> is not what happens to me and my family after i start working on it, what do we do now?

there aspects of the past that p we have forgotten and relearning them from a new age on line. that was what i liked doing best and best at. not everyone has the patience but then henry says i'm an ordinary bloke who has been lucky enough to do an extraordinary job. she was probably right. she usually is. thank you. [applause] now believe if anyone has any questions, they are you are welcome to ask me. >> could you go to the dib may be difficult -- if you say your question,ll rye pete it. >> few funding of the oed.

>> who funds the -- >> in the future. >> the question who is funding the oed and in the future. it won't be that. it's entirely funded by the university press in oxford. oub is the largest university press in the world. it has been able in the past to fund the editorial work on the oed which still, even though it's now online, it doesn't make money. doesn't lose money as much as it did in the past. we had sort of government funding for the computerization project, hundreds of thousands of pounds 'but that was for a very specific project so essentially funds by the university press for the benefit of scholarship. >> there are other modern language that's something like the oed. >> the question is are there a modern huangs who something like

the oed. the answer is, i would say, no, but the answer is, yes. the french, example, have the -- not quite the same as the oed. it's multivolume. it was originally part of a major project to -- have dictionaries of different periods of the language but in fact, what they've done is produced a dictionary from the 18th century up to the present day, but with dealing with etymologies right back to the earlier period so there's a very good comprehensive dictionary of english. in oed started in 1884, started publishing in 1884 and completed in 1928, which is 44 years later. it wasn't the first of the big historical national historical projects to start. the first was the grim's dictionary and that goes back to the 18 oh -- 1840s.

people always think the editors of the oed must work very slowly to take 44 years to write a book. the grimms dictionary started in 1848 and was completed in 1960. and that is -- they did some great work but the difference is that their articles are rather more discussed. the oed is very structured and very logical. and you can see the logical development of words very easily if you know how to read the dictionary. the grimm dictionary took 110 years to complete. they then started on five years later on a revision. but you can't really revise something easily that is the work of four generations of editors which is the case with the grimms, and so actually the moment that -- the update

project was founded. a big spanish dictionary project that started -- took about 30 years getting through the letter "a" and then put that in mothballs baas is -- because it was too expensive. the oed was -- the guys that put tolling the original policy for the oed were can can but -- can so you bring your editor. those digs dictionary -- spaniel dictionary was national project, funds by the spanish government. they've now started a much dish with much more perspective which much more product which might become a national dictionary.

more norwegian and swedessish dictionary, us a centrallan national dictionary, one volume, but the language from captain cook up to the present day. just the second edition of that come out. so there are national dictionaries throughout the english and french, spanish, speaking world. but i like to think that the oed has something on many of them. the dutch dictionary actually took longer than the grimms dictionary to complete. they say they're the biggs dictionary in the world but i don't believe them. >> chinese? >> the isn't a chinese or japanese dictionary and would like there to be one so they're -- korea, for example, where people are looking at the possibilities of doing it. but it's matter of some alarm that they haven't got a

dictionary like the oed. the lady in the middle. >> who decides what is nonstandard and also, when you have a word like "concerning" which is now increasingly being used instead of worrying, drive mist nuts. is that labeled a slang or -- so two separate questions. nonstandard and then once identified as slang. >> so who -- how are -- who guys whether a word is nobody standard or not,' -- nonstandard or and not how do you determine whether a word should be labeled as slang or is standard english. nonstandard, standard, we really going from the evidence. from the genres of the tex in which a word is found.

so if aword is only found 0 on the internet and used in informal conversation, and it's never found in formal discourse, that will help us both with the issue of whether it's nonstandard or whether it is language or colloquial. so we just looking at the context. if a word is never dish is only used regionally, then we're likely to say its nonstandard. if it's only used -- if it's a nope term that people -- style purists correct and there's an issue about, then we might indicate that is nonstandard or -- but the concept of standard is rick because it changes through generations and over the years. so a chalk in the language -- the verb "to finalize "in the 1920s was very much disliked in the uk because it was an

americanism. and i it was not liked -- star guide said it was not the word to use. we would have said was nonstandard at the time but nowdays nobody has any idea it was american originally. and it takes about maybe dish tend to think it takes 50 years for something to work through the generations to become fully accepted. and for people to forget where i came from. one problem in the book is that people forget people about language and i'm trying to remind them about curious facts that helps your understand of the word. so there is this long period of time in which the older generation will use one occupy tough word ask the younger generation will delve now ones and the older generation say that's slapping, and younger people say we ite all the time and it's not slang so it's balancing act. and it's only easier on the

in some ways it's easier on the internet because in a book you put the book and is there forever and we came review things continually in a dynamics way. >> going back to the historical question. excuse me. >> in the french historical dictionary do they reference the th historical examples?or for example in the oed when the oed takes a reference from the king james 1611 bible they put chapter verse. do the french do that? >> they do from the 18th century onwards. the question is does the frenchn

dictionary give chapter and verse for all the examples like the oed does and the answer is let me give an example.am they do chapter and verse but they don't give as many examples as the oed. maybe the first example they have got so they will giveth proper information but they don't have as much documentatioo as the oed. about three-quarters has documentation and the rest as etymology and annunciation and definition etc..orkshire >> the project into the 19th century when they were transferring everything. when way were laughing everything when all the comes in england had our own glossary of words and they are a malaga

mated into the english style university at the university of oxford who was working alongside of sir james murray. they lived down the same road. so there is -- i am -- not my family comes from yorkshire, and so when my father moved south, he brought various york shire terms with women which were used in surrey. he was using his own father's words. that's what everybody does and that's how language regional words are disbursed around the country. one 0 two -- obviously happened when english dialect was -- the english language came to america and when people went in the 18th century to australia. there's a common verb in australia, to fosic to hunt

around for something, know it toes taken over to australia from britain north an original wordment but the only evidence in britain was three different counties and so it's one offers these words that has been taken possibly by one or two people who went across, either as settlers are transport years to australia and the word somehow stuck there, maybe became used in mining or something. and so it is interesting to see how things flower in different places where you don't expect it and that's all -- that is why we try to collect information from all around the world to cover the english language. >> -- [inaudible] >> i was just wondering you could talk about how you gather your expertise through the reading program, who the readers are, who your experts are, and i had another question, just separate from that but if you

think there's such a thing as a temperment for a a lex cogoffer. >> the first question is -- >> your reading programs. >> reader. >> a massive network. >> in the old days, the readers were less sured gentleman and they're lady wives. a lot of clergymen, wives, people who that -- which we don't have these days so we have a different type of -- we have two types. readers who aren't on a reading program, and paid for what they produce. we havers who send things in for the love outle and some people just send thing inside because they want to contribute to the history of the language, produce

the best stuff we get. and -- >> welcome. >> we appeal to them sometimes but people just have this itch to contribute. it's like a crowd sourcing to some extent. and are they the type of person? often the people that want to help or want to be lexicographers aren't the right people. i say in the book that a lot of the -- sometimes we have -- we tend not to appoint linguists. you think on a dictionary you would want to appoint ling linguists. we have people who hand aware in of language and analytical ability and interested in a wide range of things, sometimes people who want to become lexicographers don't necessarily have the sort of broadness of touch that we would like.

the readers is much the same. they can be an eclectic lot, an awkward people. >> i'm one of them. >> okay. so, you are possibly one thief words. >> i work on the srp. >> okay, yeah. right. >> the scholarly reading program the reading program is for the more academic types because we are asking you to read secondary literature and provide information that scholars have produced about the word. we also have a historical reading program where peopled asked to read 17th, 18th 18th century texts and they have a different awareness, an awareness of -- we don't want the our files flooded with lots of examples to con contemplate because something things it's an interesting usage. so for that sort of reading, historical redding you want

people with an awareness of lodge in a particular time -- language in a particular time. everybody has to be practical and quite obsessive, and everybody has to be ready to be wrong. are you any of those things? okay. that's good. >> i was on the narp as well. >> right. >> but srp was the best fit. the etymologist. >> the north american reading program which we set up in 1989 is the first time we actually started collecting information on computer rather than on index cards so. we didn't know whether -- things we do we don't know if they're going bork or not but that's the only way to good forward. so that was an exciting time. >> the era of texting and twitter, and this sort of contractions or abbreviations. one of them is bff, best friend forever.

is that included in the digs dictionary? >> the most well-known lol, for example, is in the dictionary. we have no objection to including them because they're linguistic marks. they're word, part of the language. so no reason they shouldn't be there. we have to balance what we've got time to do, so whether it's worth adding a whole series of abbreviations in preference to new developments in chemistry, example, we have to balance where our time is. there are more words than even the oed has room for. but, yeah, there's no rope why they shouldn't be in. it's not -- we say, oh, dreadful use of language -- hugo would. but i don't.

>> come back to you. >> ever take a position on grammar? i'm hearing even supposedly educated broadcasters use phrases like you and i. and it should be you "and me." >> we don't take positions but we take -- we monitor it. we say -- we're trying to showup -- we let other people take positions. it's not really our job to stand up and say you must do this and mustn't do that. we're not gram marians. but we say this is the documentary evidence we found for this use as opposed for you and i as oppose told you and me in particular context. so we're trying to illustrate what there is rather than say something is right or wrong but we indicate that one is nonstandard, but we don't get on sour soap box and tell people

off for it. >> how many words there are in the to english language? >> just let me start. hang on, one -- you shouldn't really read anything to what anyone says about words. there are about 686,000 words in the compounds in oed. that's not english today an but get to bang to the old english period and it's around the world. so, you could say there are almost a million. on the other hand a web site has been tracking words and they came irtheir millionth word several years ago, but how many word decide you use in everyday speech? you can't really even brief those words. people say you might know 20,000 and use 40,000. other people say you might know -- double that. so no way of getting into scour brain to work it out so don't believe anything like that.

i don't think. >> time for one more. >> i'm interested in the management, the administration of such a complex project. you're the boss. >> i'm the chief editor. >> did you hire and fire? did things come to your office, like, standard and nonstandard, and people were arguing about and it nobody else could solve? what ended up in your office? >> you mean -- let me remind myself. yeah, i started off as a basic editor so i was given my bundle of index cards in those days and had to work through the right definitions in con justification of our research in libraries, couple of washington library researchers in the audience today and if you have very difficult questions i'll pat them on to them. -- pass them on to them. so, you have to be able to do

the basic editing, and as you get more experience you oversee other editors but you also have to do -- final it yourself. never wanted to get myself involved in administration in terms of running the project. thought if you're working on the oed you should work on the oed and you should dem demonstrate -- we have 75 editors and thought person in charge august to be seen to be doing real editorial work. so i always did that rather than spending time in meetings and -- i got various times more or less involved in budgets and things but i don't seem to get them right. they just seem to be happy to let go into words. >> thank you so much for coming tonight. [applause] >> ' you can purchase a copy of the book and we'll start the

signing line around the table. [inaudible conversations]

>> there are good things and bad things. >> no was a good thing? >> the good thing is we have a reliable accessible and supply and just as you said the cost of food in real dollars is animal-based protein particularly but also wheat and milk as you know. those are the good things. the bad things are that this is an industry that is not really come under the appropriate curfew and that's because --. >> the purview of home? >> any predatory or until recently consumer attention.