TWO DICTIONARIES COMPARISON

Two Dictionaries Comparison

Two Dictionaries Comparison

Introduction

The writer approaching a study involving the Oxford English Dictionary is blessed by the existence of a wealth of scholarship on the dictionary and its makers, as well as voluminous primary-source materials. The writings of the dictionary editors themselves are useful in divining ideals, motives, and decisions that affected the information contained in the dictionary. Each Part of the dictionary contained a preface that presented information on numbers of entry words, comparisons of that part's content with the content of other major dictionaries, and acknowledgments of the contributions of significant staff members and volunteer editors and readers, as well as tidbits that offer a glimpse into the work involved in creating the entries for particular words.

Dictionary

These have all been helpfully assembled by Darrell Raymond (n.d.). Murray's own General Explanations, included in the introductory matter to the first part of the first volume of the dictionary, give a sense of the huge scale of the dictionary project and explain the principles that guided his work. Astonishing collections of correspondence, records, and other materials relating to the compilation, editing, and production of the OED are maintained by the archives of the OUP and Oxford University's Bodleian Library (the latter's mountain of records, however, is ill-organized and mostly uncatalogued).

The OED's inclusion of words from South Asia has interested two compilers of word-lists that are useful when trying to gauge the level and character of such words within the larger dictionary. Rao (1954) produced a chronological examination of Indian borrowings into English as documented by the OED based on data he had compiled prior to 1949. Dismissing another scholar's estimate from 1934 that 188 Indian words had been incorporated into the English language, an enumeration that does not include even all the words admitted into the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Rao finds that the OED accords recognition to no less than 900 main words of Indian origin, as well as several thousand derivatives thereof (2).

In the latter half of the eighteenth century a greater number of words were borrowed, owing to .such events as the Siege of Arcot, the Black Hole tragedy, the Battle of Plassey, and the impeachment of Warren Hastings. In striking contrast to commerce we have in this century an abundance of military and political terms, which testify to the rapid change in the nature of Indo-British relation.. [In the nineteenth] century the religions, languages, and literatures and above all the philosophy of India began to attract the attention of English scholars. India's contribution to the terminologies of philosophy and philology began in this period [Events of the twentieth century brought] a few words that reflect the momentous changes in the political scene of India culminating in the partition of the country and the withdrawal of the British (100-101).

Comparative Studies

Two somewhat overlapping categories of lexicographical research have been most instructive for the present study, as models of ways to design such a project: those comparing the contents of two dictionaries, and those examining the interactions ...