The History of the Historical Thesaurus of the OED

Like any large and ambitious project, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) has a long and varied history.

In 1965 Michael Samuels, then Professor of English Language at the University of Glasgow, gave a lecture to the Philological Society in which he announced that his department was embarking on a project to create a historical thesaurus of English. The proposal was based on a thorough analysis of the sense inventory of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and the intention was that the work would be carried out by staff and students at Glasgow University. Apart from Samuels, the members of the department who embarked on the work included Jane Roberts, who undertook to supplement the OED’s Old English materials. Fellow authors Christian Kay and Irené Wotherspoon joined the project in 1969 as Research Assistants, mainly involved in collecting data. Each member of the team started to transcribe information from the multi-volume OED, using paper slips to record the entries.

Christian Kay, Director

Over the following years the project faced a series of intellectual, financial, and domestic challenges. The most serious threat came in 1978, when the building housing the entire and only copy of the Thesaurus archive caught fire. The building was seriously damaged as a result but, by a great stroke of good fortune, the many thousands of slips in the archive survived, thanks to their storage in metal filing drawers within metal filing cabinets. Thereafter, the archive was microfilmed and new slips were completed in triplicate, with copies being stored at King’s College London, and in the Glasgow University Archive.

Meanwhile, fund-raising remained a problem throughout the life of the project, and the team became adept at dividing the project into manageable chunks which could be completed within the term of a grant. With financial straits being an ever-present backdrop, one team-member, perhaps with excessive zeal, worked out how many pages of the OED could be recorded by a slip-maker within the lifetime of a single pencil (answer: 130).

From the late 1970s onwards, as data collection proceeded, the team focused increasingly on the immense task of devising a new system of classification which would do justice to such a huge amount of material. Such a system had to be flexible enough to accommodate changes in the vocabulary over the years and the cultural changes they reflected. While the resultant framework inevitably coincides with those of other thesauri at certain points, as a whole it offers a uniquely detailed system of classification.

Basic slip-making from the first edition of the OED could have been completed by 1980, but the decision was made to include material from the Supplements to the OED published between 1972 and 1986 and, later, from the second edition of 1989 and its Additions Series of 1993-97, thereby enriching the project, but also slowing it down.

Making a thesaurus is an endlessly circular process, with material being revised and reclassified as the project progressed. But finally in July 2008, after more than 40 years of scholarship, and many, many person-hours of dedication and hard work, the last slip was slotted into place, and the task of producing the print publication began.

Timeline to the History of the Historical Thesaurus of the OED

1965 Announcement by Michael Samuels, Professor of English Language at the University of Glasgow – at a lecture to the Philological Society - that his department intends to undertake production of a historical thesaurus of English. Work on the Historical Thesaurus begins. The focus is on data collection and the entries are compiled using paper slips to record data (in the same way as the OED). 1969 With the scale of the project became apparent, a successful application for funding led to the employment of Irené Wotherspoon and Christian Kay as research assistants, mainly collecting data. A number of volunteers begin to work on the project in Glasgow, Germany, and Canada. 1978 The project faces many challenges during the 1970s, the most significant being a major fire which threatened to destroy the entire archive of paper slips. All material subsequently microfilmed and copies kept at different locations in the UK. During the 1970s classifying the data becomes the main focus. Postgraduate students are recruited. A decision is also taken to include material from the Supplements, and the forthcoming Second Edition and Additions Series of the OED. This enriches, but also slows down, the project. During the 1970s Old English material entered into electronic databases developed in London. 1981 Talks with Oxford University Press on publishing the project. During the 1980s the UK government sponsors programme to train people in editing and data entry skills. The trainees help to edit and input the bulk of the Historical Thesaurus data into an electronic system. 1984 Department for English Language moves into its current site at Glasgow University. A kitchen is converted into a fire-proof archive. 1989 Christian Kay becomes Director of the project. 1995 The Old English material published in the Thesaurus of Old English by Roberts and Kay. Material from this publication entered into the Historical Thesaurus in simplified form. Programme of updating the early sections of classification in progress. Material from the Second Edition plus the Additions Series continues to be cross-checked with the original First Edition material. 2008 The last entries in the Historical Thesaurus completed. 2009 Publication of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary