“I’m just an ordinary bloke who’s been lucky enough to do an extraordinary job.” That’s a quote from John Simpson’s memoir The Word Detective: A Life in Words: From Serendipity to Selfie, but it did little to ease my nerves in drafting an email inviting him to participate in the AlumNouse series. The Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) 1993-2013: should I try to impress him with elaborate vocabulary, but what if I misuse a word - the horror! But, to my (very) pleasant surprise and relief, John replied to my email with language I didn’t in fact have to open the OED to understand. What follows is our discussion of John’s time at York, followed by the 37 years he spent working on the dictionary in Oxford
John graduated from York in 1975 with a BA in English Literature, though much of his time at university was spent playing hockey: he was Captain of the university team in his second year.
John: “It was great fun …and it meant I got to meet all sorts of people from elsewhere in the university I might otherwise not have met”.
When he wasn’t playing hockey, John focused his efforts on modules about older periods of literature, an interest that blossomed whilst at York. John explained to me that “one of the things [he] gained from York was the opportunity to study Old English and Medieval Icelandic”, something that would later prove essential in securing his initial role at the OED.
After graduating from York, John completed an MA in Medieval Studies at the University of Reading in 1976. It was here, in a common room at the university, that John’s now-wife Hilary showed him an advert in the paper for an entry-level position at the OED. Whilst John had used the OED from time to time during his undergrad degree and his MA, he’d never before considered a career in lexicography. As he explained in his memoir: “Nobody thinks dictionaries are written. They are just there”. John’s reaction to Hilary’s suggestion that he apply to the OED certainly comes as a surprise given that 17 years later he’d be the Editor in Chief.
John: “I thought, if somebody thinks you’re the kind of person who’d want to work on a dictionary, is she the kind of person you’d want as a girlfriend? But anyway, I didn’t have any other options, so I thought I’d give it a go.”
John described this initial role at the OED as “masses of detailed research”. On the collection of words he was tasked with exploring: from documenting the earliest recorded examples of a word, to analysing all the information found into a succinct definition and word history. Once John understood the editing and defining process, he was able to work his way up the dictionary, working on different projects from ‘New Words’ and ‘Proverbs’ on the way to becoming Chief Editor in 1993.
Having spoken in his memoir, The Word Detective, about the dull public perception of lexicographers, I was intrigued to know whether this is a view John had shared before joining the dictionary.
John: “I’d assumed Oxford was very academic and quite insular. And that the dictionary was super-academic. But then you get there and it's just ordinary people working on it: people committed to doing the best for the good of the dictionary.”
After speaking with John about his journey to and within the dictionary, I was keen to ask some questions about how John had brought the dictionary into the 21st century, particularly as Chief Editor when the dictionary moved online. But first, there was the question I knew I couldn’t ask.
John’s memoir described how lexicographers are plagued by journalists asking for their ‘favourite word’, so after vehemently scratching that question from my things-to-ask-John list, I instead settled on asking him a couple of adjacent questions.
Grace: “I was wondering whether you have a favourite project that you’ve worked on.”
John: “The OED itself was the main one, ‘New Words’ always left me a bit cold. I mean I’m much more interested in discovering that, say, the word numismatics was actually first used in 1790 rather than in 1803, as we’d previously thought: a different century and a slightly different world of obsession and collection!”
Grace: “And are there any words that you really dislike?”
My question landed with a coy smile as John knew I was inverting his dreaded question, but years of training in lexicographical objectivity clearly paid off…
John: “I really can’t think of one. It’s like I’ve been brainwashed to not think of one.” (Subconscious wink)
During John’s time as Editor of the OED, the dictionary moved online. We spoke about this transition, and how John anticipates technology will continue to impact the running of the dictionary.
John: “The transition was difficult, but it wasn’t impossible to convert the old OED to a digital database, because the original editors in the nineteenth century were extremely rigorous in separating information into what we would now call fields. Online searching means that it is now much easier to collect information on the development of a word … What I don’t know is how AI is going to affect that.”
John explained that if you ask an AI engine like ChatGPT for a definition “you might get something that sounds superficially very good”, but he is unsure if “it is actually going to fulfil the criteria of the quotation evidence on which the definition must be based”.
We then spent some time discussing the changes John oversaw as Chief Editor, and the future challenges he anticipates for the OED.
Grace: “Not only did the dictionary move online, but there were also changes in language along with developments in technology. What do you suppose the challenges for the OED are now?”
John: “You can’t identify in advance where language is going, but you do have to keep up with the changes as soon as they happen”
Language reflects the society that uses and creates it: “when society changes, so does language. So when people blame language for things, they’re really blaming society.”
Grace: “Another thing I picked up from your book is that many people assume, and to be honest so did I, that as Editor of the OED you get to pick whatever words you want to throw into the dictionary, but, in reality, that’s near impossible to do. In fact, it's also almost near impossible to create a new word, is that right?”
John: “Parents seem to like writing to dictionary editors telling them, for example, that their daughter has invented a new word for ‘cat’, or ‘cloud’, or whatever, and ‘could we add it to the dictionary?’ ‘I don’t think so!’, is the technical answer. I have to write back to say that it's not until the word takes off nationally that we can even start to think of including it in the dictionary, because we base everything on usage, both in terms of the language of the past and the language of today.”
John also spoke on the stereotype of OED editors and of their perceived authority as the “guardians of language”.
John: “Sadly we are not all-powerful. We’re reflecting language, not directing it … The language develops organically, on its own. People think we are the guardians of language, but we’re not: language could run riot - we’re just trying to understand what’s going on.”
John’s explanation of this diagnostic mindset certainly adjusted my impression of the role of those working at the OED. However, John told me that “even though lexicographers are not guardians of the changing language, they’re trying to be guardians of the truth as far as the facts about language are concerned”. This was the attitude taken by John when asked to support the making of the Australian National Dictionary, particularly in regard to words from oral and indigenous cultures with a less visible etymological trail.
John: “There was a considerable amount of work going on in Australia and New Zealand on indigenous languages while I was working on the OED, and it's something that I hadn’t really known about before but which gave us a fresh perspective on language.”
We spoke about the difficulty in tracing the etymology of words spoken before printed records, particularly when their first usage appeared in slang. However, as John explained that “etymology is a theoretical construct in which we can normally believe, but ultimately we don’t usually know who ‘invented’ any word, so if you go far enough back every word enshrines a mystery (wrapped in an enigma, etc.).
” I was also keen to know John’s thoughts on some abbreviations that have been taking social media by storm, in particular the ‘genny lecs’.
Grace: “A trend I’ve seen recently across social media is people shortening longer words or phrases, so the ‘general election’ is now the ‘genny lec’. I wondered what your opinion on that was.”
John: “That’s what happens in the wonderful world of word-formation, so it doesn’t surprise me. Word-creation by abbreviation is a popular 20th and 21st century phenomenon. Word change happens rapidly these days, and as long as I can keep up I’m normally in favour.”
Social media is also changing an integral aspect of the OED: word collection.
Grace: “You describe words in your book as ‘a cultural index’; on that note I thought it might be interesting to discuss social media’s impact upon word collection.”
While John described himself as, to some extent, “out of the loop” since his retirement in 2013, he did offer some insights on how social media might be affecting this process: “any communication leads to change, and the more communication there is, the more change there will be.”
Grace: “And do you have any pet peeves: words that people use incorrectly?”
John: “Is this the ‘favourite word’ question under another guise? I actually find that pronunciation changes annoy me more.”
We spoke about pronunciation, particularly the flatter pronunciation of vowels such as ‘a’ in ‘France’.
John: “You don’t think the language of your youth will change radically as you grow older. But it does. It’s a dynamic process. That can be disturbing, but actually you just have to ‘suck it up’, because that’s what language does. It’s not there to make you feel comfortable.”
It was interesting to share with John my own experience and opinions on this, having written an article earlier this year on ‘Accent Assimilation’ and how my southern accent twangs with the occasional northern vowel, reminding me of my upbringing in Lancashire.
Grace: “You refer in your book to the OED as the “biography of English words”. I wondered how you’d explain the OED to someone who had no idea what it was - perhaps to an alien?”
John: “It’s tricky, isn’t it? What it’s trying to do is use documentary evidence to paint a picture of the language, like a mosaic: individual words and individual word histories, and how they all link together and interact.”
While the OED is certainly a historically centred dictionary, it’s interesting to recognise the continued public interest in etymology and the English language. In 2005 John appeared on a BBC television series called ‘Balderdash and Piffle’, in which members of the public attempted to solve unknown etymologies and to have them accepted by the dictionary. (You have Barbara from Worcester to thank for the inclusion of the origin of ‘ploughman’s lunch’.)
Grace: “The way I see my generation engage with and enjoy words is through the New York Times Daily Puzzles, like the Wordle. I wondered whether that’s something you do as well.”
John: “No, I hate puzzles; but that’s probably because I'm not very good at them. And I’m not particularly good at crosswords either. I’ve got various friends who write crosswords for national papers, and they’re always a bit surprised by this. But I prefer real problems rather than artificial ones.”
I decided to end our interview by asking John why he’d chosen to stick with the dictionary for 37 years.
John: “I tend to stick with things. I think I’m a slow starter and a long finisher. I’ve got good mental stamina”.
Many thanks to John Simpson for getting involved in the AlumNouse series. John’s memoir The Word Detective: A Life in Words: From Serendipity to Selfie is available to buy from Amazon or Waterstones, to find out more about John please find his website: https://johnsimpson.org/
Want to get involved? Whether you are a current UoY student and want to write for AlumNOUSE, or you’re a York alum and want to share your story, please contact me via my email: grace.bannister@nouse.co.uk.
