The Meaning of Everything, Simon Winchester
The Meaning of Everything, Simon Winchester
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The Meaning of Everything

Author: Simon Winchester

Narrator: Simon Winchester

Unabridged: 7 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 01/13/2004


Synopsis

From 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.

About Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Stephanie on January 02, 2008

I can't recommend this enough. Fascinating, humor-full and very readable. You wouldn't think this would be funny, but it is. I mean laugh-out-loud funny. Maybe I'm a complete nerd but this is fascinating and fun and full of things you don't need to know! The people who contributed to the dictionary......more

Goodreads review by Celia on October 17, 2018

Simon Winchester has done it again. A clear concise study of the history of the Oxford English Dictionary. I have already read one of his books, The Madman and the Professor, which describes one of the aspects of the project. This book followed that one and described the entire history instead of on......more

Goodreads review by Kathryn on January 27, 2022

I used to be a project manager. If I had missed my deadlines by as much as the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary missed theirs, let's just say I wouldn't have retired with a party, a gift and a pension. But, then again, my project was never the first truly comprehensive compilation of every h......more

Goodreads review by Bruce on May 17, 2009

2 1/2 stars, really. There’s a reason I’ve taken at least a week to get to this summary. It’s been hard to bring myself to find something to say about it beyond a resounding ‘meh.’ It’s sad that this book hasn’t much to recommend itself as a standalone history of the Oxford English Dictionary or as......more