Items concerning the history
of lexicography are not
included unless they bear on
the praxis of lexicography
Canones Lexicographici (1860)
The Oxford Quarto Dictionary (2008)
Sanford Brown Meech at the Middle English Dictionary (1995)
Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (2001)
“‘Esquivalience’ is too elaborate,” said Sidney Landau, the author of Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography … “If someone made that up, they’re nuts.” … [Erin] McKean confirmed that “esquivalience” was a fabricated word.… “Its inherent fakeitude is fairly obvious,” she said. (The New Yorker)
Confessions of the Antedater (2018)
Dictionaries and wordbooks used as sources by OED (2021)
Dating Middle English evidence in the OED (2023)
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For Craigie ‘[t]he great question [was] how to make the best of the situation’; and this could be done by taking whatever material there was and working it up into as complete a form as possible, making notes on what additional information or evidence was required which could be dealt with in due course. He favoured the idea that several assistants could each be assigned a letter or letters on this basis, as a means of making quick inroads on the whole alphabet, and bringing significant gaps to light which could then be addressed.
Onions’s approach, by contrast, was to work steadily through the material, making it as complete as possible – conducting research in the Bodleian Library and elsewhere if necessary – before moving on.
Sisam, who after all had some experience of the work, had long ago spotted a disadvantage of this method, namely the temptation for assistants to spend more and more time on research, which they found more appealing than the ‘hard and steady work’ of preparing copy in the Old Ashmolean.… Sisam had recently drawn attention to the effect on progress of Mrs Powell’s ‘drifting more & more into the Bodleian’.
(props Peter Gilliver)
OUPA/ODME/11/61 (Chapman):
The discrimination of words and senses, devised by H. W. F. for this dictionary, is a new thing in lexicography. O. E. D. and other dictionaries have, of course, distinguished uses as obsolete, or as low (Johnson’s word), or as slang. But this is the first systematic attempt to distinguish between, e.g., general, literary, and technical uses.
(props Charlotte Brewer)