The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-03-31
MAKING A DICTIONARY.
Thousands of Books Read and Millions
of Quotations Made.

| Thousands of Books Read and Millions
of Quotations Made.
The scheme Is simplicity itself. Ia
| bles and desks, and along the walls row
upon row of pigeon-holes, more than
thousand Of them, full Of slips. Every
one Of these slips has passed or vii
through the hands of five helpers and
four assistants at the tables are con-
stantly at work sorting and classifying
them. They contain the quotations.; APP
proximately million of them go to the
ton-there are about six tons of them
1t would take you thirty years to look
through them at the rate of one min
utel That only a million will be used
in the dictionary gives one the impress
sion that things are not so bad after
all. Yet, as matter of fact, the saw
ing of labor would be immense if the
whole of the six tons could be printed.
AS it is, they have all to be weighed in
the balance, Then, when the best have
been selected, they must be made OF a
convenient length, for the dictionary Is
limited to eight times the size OF Web
ster. On slopes against the wall and on
shelves are ranged the works of refer
ern, in many languages.
The slips which line the scriptorium
came from all parts of the world-from
France and from Florida, from Algeria
and Amsterdam. from Upper Egypt,
Stockholm, Rome, Florence and Japan.
Among the early readers there are
many distinguished names: Rossetti,
Hazlitt, Perowne, Lubbock, Littledale,
Lightfoot, Washington, Craik and Dow
den. More than one hundred thousand
books have been read and extracts
made. 1t took two assistants three
years, working eight hours day, to
sort the material transferred to Dr.
Murray by the Pathological society. He
sent out circulars to the registered con-
tributors, five hundred of them-four
hundred and fifty came back through
the dead-letter object Twenty-six sub
editors had been originally appointed,
one for each letter of the alphabet.
Nearly one-half of these were dead.
From executors and survivors, how
ever, quotations came tumbling in by
the ton, unearthed from lumber rooms,
from cellars from garrets and from
cupboards. They came in cases, in
trunks, in hampers, in baskets. There
were barrels of nouns and bundles of
verbs, sheaves of conjunctions and par
GELS of adjectives. In every conceivable
form of package-even an old bassinet
full, containing, too, mouse ana her
family reared on parts of speech But
the slips of PA" could not be found,
nor the sub-editor responsible for them.
With infinite difficulty he was traced
from place to place till it was ascer-
tanned that he had last resided in
County Cavan. There he had died, and
there in loft over shed, the missing
words were found. 1t must be under
stood that these sub-editors and read
ers have given, and still give, their SER
vices without fee or reward. The cor
respondence entailed in keeping them
at work was in itself huge matter
From thirty to forty letters day had
to be written. Altogether not fewer
than two thousand people have had
finger in the pie.
The conditions have happily changed
since then. The chief work at present
consists in sorting and classifying the
New books and new editions,
it is true, come out now and again,
which must be read. But a trained
hand of some hundred men and women
all that is required. The
scope Of the New English Dictionary is
wider than that of any Of its prede-
cessors. 1t concludes all words, not only
those belonging to modern English, but
those which are archaic and obsolete.
1t is enriched with quotations from the
earliest written records down to the
present time. DR.. johnson despised de-
rivation, Horne Tooke definition; in the
new dictionary derivation and defini-
ton go together; in fact, etymology is
for the first time assigned its full hon
ors in the history of words. By curl
GUS inversion, the longest words come
to have the briefest treatment in the
New Dictionary That this should be
so Is natural enough. Our ancestors
had not the taste, or indeed the necas-
sity, for long words. They have been
recently introduced, chiefly for scientific
ana technical uses. They have no his
tory worth mentioning and no infiec-
IONS and are therefore easily dealt
With. stevenson was applied to as to |
he word "brean,' which had turned I'D
n one of his breathless tales. To which |
he romancer replied that he was sorry |
% say that he had not the proofs of the |
book, but 'brean" was plainly a mis-
print for "ocean!" And he goes on to |
show; by an example, how his hand |
writing made this possible. From Good
Words