Compilation and publication of Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
Submitting Institution
University of GlasgowUnit of Assessment
English Language and LiteratureSummary Impact Type
CulturalResearch Subject Area(s)
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Linguistics
Summary of the impact
The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HT),
the result of 44 years of research,
was published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim. It has been
described as `perhaps the single
most significant tool ever devised for investigating semantic, social, and
intellectual history'
(Randolph Quirk). It has so far generated an income of £1.6 million from
global sales, bringing
economic benefit to both the publisher and the wider publishing sector.
Cultural enrichment has
been delivered through the integration of the Thesaurus into the Oxford
English Dictionary (OED)
website, opening it up to the c.1.5 million visitors per year who use the
OED online. Notable user
groups from outwith linguistics include novelists, poets, broadcasters and
historians.
Underpinning research
The HT consists of the recorded vocabulary of English virtually in its
entirety from c.700 AD to the
present, arranged into a comprehensive semantic framework. It therefore
allows a reader to
understand not only which words were available to discuss any particular
concept at any given
moment in the history of English, but also the full range and variety of
words available to English
speakers at that moment. The framework itself also provides a
comprehensive survey of all the
things, concepts and ideas that have been recorded in the last millennium
of English. Consisting of
over 797,000 words and 236,000 conceptual categories, the HT is unique,
both in its coverage and
in its method. Approximately 85 percent of the HT was produced in the
period 1993-2012;
publication in 2009 was the culmination of 44 years of editorial work. The
majority of published
research on the HT has been undertaken in the period after 2008, as this
was the first stage at
which the final data was ready to be analysed by scholars.
In more detail, the classification of the HT arranges entries in a
comprehensive semantic hierarchy
according to each attested sense of a word. Each individual synonym is
presented in chronological
order according to the first recorded date of the word's use in English,
with earliest synonyms given
first. The three primary divisions of the HT reflect the main activities
and preoccupations of users of
the language:
- the external world,
- the mental world, and
- the social world.
These in turn are divided into 354 major categories, such as Food and
Drink, Thought, or War.
Further categories and subcategories then follow, moving from the most
general ideas to the most
specific, and the semantic categories and subcategories are headed by
phrases which define them
and link to preceding sections.
Each word sense is therefore precisely entered into its place in this
comprehensive hierarchy of
meaning, according to its meaning and date, and is accessible either by
browsing at any level of
the hierarchy, or by looking up a particular word in its alphabetical
place via the Index. The Index
itself lists nearly one million references and ensures a comprehensive
look-up and accessibility of
the full text.
Conceived in the 1960s by Michael Samuels, then Professor of English
Language at the University
of Glasgow (Glasgow 1959-1990), the HT project was directed by Samuels
and, following his
retirement, completed by his successor Christian Kay (Glasgow 1969-2005,
currently Honorary
Professorial Research Fellow). Its other editors are Jane Roberts
(1961-68, subsequently
University College Dublin and King's College London) and Irené Wotherspoon
(Glasgow 1969-2008).
Over 40 staff at the University of Glasgow carried out the research
required for the work
between 1965 and 2009, mainly in categorising the contents of various
dictionaries (including the
whole of the second edition of the OED) into the conceptual
structure of the HT. Kay continues to
direct the project with Marc Alexander (Glasgow 2006-) as her deputy, and
its current associate
directors are Jeremy Smith (Glasgow 1979-), Carole Hough (Glasgow 1995-),
and Wendy
Anderson (Glasgow 2004-), with computing manager Flora Edmonds (Glasgow
1985-). While the
vast majority of the project was carried out at Glasgow, some limited
research was undertaken at
King's College London on the Old English materials under Jane Roberts,
following her move there.
References to the research
• Roberts, Jane and Christian Kay with Lynne Grundy. 1995. A
Thesaurus of Old English. (=King's
College London Medieval Studies XI.) Second edition, 2000.
Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN
9789042015630 [available from HEI or link
to online version]
• Kay, Christian. 2000. `Historical semantics and historical
lexicography: will the twain ever
meet?', in Lexicology, Semantics and Lexicography in English
Historical Linguistics: Selected
Papers from the Fourth G.L. Brook Symposium, ed. by Julie Coleman
and Christian Kay.
Amsterdam: Benjamins, 53-68. ISBN 9781556199721 [available from HEI]
• Kay, Christian J. and Irené A. W. Wotherspoon. 2002. `Turning the
dictionary inside out: some
issues in the compilation of a historical thesaurus', in A Changing
World of Words: Studies in
English historical semantics and lexis, ed. by Javier E. Diaz Vera.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 109-135.
ISBN 9789042013308 [available from HEI]
• O'Hare, Cerwyss. 2004. `Folk Classification in the HTE Plants
Category', in Kay and Smith,
eds, 179-191. in Categorization in the History of English, ed. by
Christian Kay and Jeremy
Smith. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 59-69. ISBN 9781588116192 [available from
HEI}
• Kay, Christian and Irené Wotherspoon. 2005. 'Semantic relationships in
the Historical
Thesaurus of English'. Lexicographica 21 (Specia), 47-57. ISSN
0175-6206 [available from
HEI]
• Kay, Christian. 2011.Developing the Historical Thesaurus of the OED',
in Current Methods in
Historical Semantics, ed. by Kathryn Allan and Justyna Robinson.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter,
41-58. ISBN: 9783110252903 [available from HEI]
Key grants since 1993:
• Kay, Smith and Horobin, `Lexical Searches for the Arts and Humanities':
AHRB ICT Strategy
Fund (2005-6) £67,176
• Kay, `Historical Thesaurus of English: the Final Stages': Arts and
Humanities Research
Board/Council (2000-3) £266,403
• Kay, `The Historical Thesaurus of English': Carnegie Trust for the
Universities of Scotland
(1998) £30,000
• Kay, `Historical Thesaurus of English: the Final Phase': Leverhulme
Trust (1994/97) £160,410
Details of the impact
As a major new resource for the English language, the impact of the HT
has been widespread in
preserving our linguistic heritage and presenting it to the general
public, contributing to the
economy via the publishing industry, and becoming an authoritative
resource for both international
academia and non-academic writers, especially historical novelists.
When published in late 2009, the print version of the HT received
widespread and enthusiastic
coverage in the general media as well as critical acclaim from such
prominent figures as Melvyn
Bragg, Philip Pullman, David Wooton, Alexander McCall Smith, Sir Roy
Strong and Barbara
Kingsolver. In the press, reviews and editorials appeared in The Times
(6/7/09 and 23/10/09), The
New York Times (8/01/10), The Daily Telegraph (23/8/09), The
Guardian (19/12/09), The Sunday
Times (01/11/09), The Daily Record (11/8/09), The
Literary Review (5/11/09) and The Daily Mail
(13/7/09), reaching an estimated audience of 6.5 million people worldwide,
with discussions,
interviews and features on BBC News, Radio 4, Radio 3, and other stations
across the UK,
Australia (ABC Radio Perth 21/7/09 and 11/5/10, Melbourne 13/8/09) and the
USA (WNYC 3/9/09
and 5/10/09). The Guardian praised the HT's `general and rich
application, as the reader can trace
the evolution of concepts and attitudes over centuries'.
The HT was named Book of the Year in The Guardian and The
Times Literary Supplement — publications
that reach a combined readership of c.345,000 — and it received the
Saltire Society
Research Book of the Year Award in 2009, recognising the contribution of
both the underpinning
research and the published work to the knowledge and understanding of
Scotland and the Scots.
The worldwide media impact led to unexpectedly rapid sales, with the
first print run of 4,000 selling
out within two months, necessitating an urgent reprint for Christmas 2009.
At the time of writing,
the print HT is currently in its fourth print run in three years, with
sales revenues amounting to
approximately £1.6 million — an exceptional figure for a reference volume
of this type, confirming
the significant contribution it has made to the economic prosperity of the
publishing sector.
In 2010 the HT was integrated with the online Oxford English
Dictionary to create one accessible
resource for anyone looking for information on any word. The integrated
OED site currently has
over 6 million visits per year, and HT data is tightly integrated into
each results page delivered by
the site. Since this integration, the online OED acts as an authoritative
and accessible resource for
novelists and poets, particularly writers of historical fiction. As a
consequence, the HT's popularity
has spread among this demographic by word of mouth, notably through
creative writing blogs and
forums. A typical use of it is explained by the Hugo prize-winning
novelist Mary
Robinette Kowal.
Setting out to write a fantasy set in 1815, Kowal wanted to make
sure it was clean of any
anachronisms. She therefore created her own dictionary, drawn entirely
from the works of Jane
Austen, and used this as the spell check application programme for her
novel. Whenever the
programme flagged a word as not having been used by Austen, Kowal writes,
`I looked it up in the
OED to double-check the meaning and the earliest citation. If the word
didn't work, then I used the
OED's historical thesaurus to find a period appropriate synonym'.
Similarly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
novelist Geraldine Brooks is quoted in a 2010 newspaper
interview as saying that her `go-to
resource is the amazing Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English
Dictionary', described in the
interview as `a 4000-page book that is the stuff of dreams for a
historical writer'. The celebrated
children's author Philip Pullman concurs: `I can hardly imagine any
reference book more valuable
for the historical novelist'.
Sources to corroborate the impact
Selected examples of the extensive media coverage:
- BBC Magazine Article, 8 July 2009 (link)
- The Times, 6 July 2009, "as English is the richest language, so this
mighty publication is its
treasury" (available from HEI) and The Times, 23 October 2009, "a rich
compendium"
(available from HEI)
- The Sunday Times, 1 November 2009, "this magnificent, 4,000-page
treasure chest, a
permanent monument to the anarchic energy, good humour and generosity of
our
language" (available from HEI)
- The Telegraph, 23 August 2009, "A masterpiece worth waiting 40 years
for; "the definitive
thesaurus" (link)
- The Daily Mail, 13 July 2009, "a rare treasure... imported into
British cultural life" (link)
- The New York Times, 8 January 2010, "historians, sociologists,
philosophers and literary
critics will soon wonder how they got by for so long without it...
indispensable" (link)
- The Guardian, 19 December 2009, "Book of the Year", (link)
Selected examples of use online, particularly in blogs outwith academia,
include the following (hard
copies also available from HEI):