Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-04T20:15:38.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prescriptivism and descriptivism in the first, second and third editions of OED

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2010

Charlotte Brewer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

There is a pervasive view, held by academics and educated laypeople alike, that the Oxford English Dictionary is a descriptive work. When plans for this great dictionary were first taking shape, the originators made their intentions very clear. Archbishop Trench, delivering the two lectures to the London Philological Society in 1857 which initiated the project, famously stated the axiom that the lexicographer ‘is a historian of [the language], not a critic’, while the Philological Society's Dictionary Committee announced to its members in a document of 1860 that their job was to list and describe words accurately and disinterestedly.

Type
Original Article
Information
English Today , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 24 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)