LEADER 03457nim 2200469Ka 450 001 9910149580803321 005 20240912110741.5 010 $a0-06-074403-0 035 $a(CKB)3710000000934836 035 $a(BIP)032055944 035 $a(ODN)ODN0000077193 035 $a(EXLCZ)993710000000934836 100 $a20130924d2004 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $auruna---||||| 181 $cspw$2rdacontent 182 $cs$2rdamedia 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 14$aThe meaning of everything $eThe story of the oxford english dictionary. /$fSimon Winchester 205 $aUnabridged. 210 $cHarperCollins 215 $a1 online resource (6 audio files) $cdigital 311 08$a0-06-059235-4 330 $aFrom the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary. Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language?""so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy""?and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from ""the irredeemably famous"" Samuel Johnson to the ""short, pale, smug and boastful"" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor Herbert Coleridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making?how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient than anticipated?and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press. We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium?the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it?and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project?a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivalled uber-dictionary. 606 $aNonfiction$2OverDrive 606 $aBiography & Autobiography$2OverDrive 606 $aHistory$2OverDrive 610 $aBiography & Autobiography 610 $aLanguage Arts & Disciplines 610 $aBiography 610 $aEnglish Language 615 17$aNonfiction. 615 7$aBiography & Autobiography. 615 7$aHistory. 686 $aBIO006000$aBIO007000$2bisacsh 700 $aWinchester$b Simon$0149337 701 $aWinchester$b Simon$0149337 906 $aAUDIO 912 $a9910149580803321 996 $aThe meaning of everything$94287780 997 $aUNINA