Who wrote the dictionary?

For decades after the Roman legions left Britain in the early fifth century, people expected them sooner or later to return. ‘During this bizarre interregnum,’ Pablo Scheffer wrote recently in the LRB, ‘a veneer of romanitas was everywhere.’ But unlike in other parts of the forme ...  Show more

In What is literature? (1948) Jean-Paul Sartre argued that writers and artists have a responsibility to engage with political and social realities. But is it still possible for writers to have political agency in a culture that instantly commodifies ideas? Lea Ypi, a professor of ...  Show more

With 600,000 words and 3 million quotations, the Oxford English Dictionary is a massive tome. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but the first edition wasn't published until 1884. Compiling the dictionary was a Herculean task, and James Murray, the editor of the dictionary, pu ...  Show more

With 600,000 words and 3 million quotations, the Oxford English Dictionary is a massive tome. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but the first edition wasn't published until 1884. Compiling the dictionary was a Herculean task, and James Murray, the editor of the dictionary, pu ...  Show more

The story of the Oxford English Dictionary is really something. From its origin to its crowd-sourced literary quotations. Dive in today to learn all about the best dictionary. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

When you pick up a dictionary and look up a word, have you ever stopped to consider who it was that compiled such meticulous work? Was it a scholar, or group of scholars, holed up in a musty backroom somewhere dedicating their lives to the task, or a wide group of volunteers, cro ...  Show more