METM26 keynote

Uncovering unheard voices: the Oxford English Dictionary and beyond

Sarah Ogilvie, Oxford, United Kingdom

For over 150 years, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has been revered as the definitive record of the English language. It has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian men. But the Dictionary did not just belong to the experts; it relied on contributions from members of the public. By 1928, its 414,825 entries had been crowdsourced from a surprising and diverse group of people.

The full identity of those generous volunteers remained unknown for a century, until ten years ago when I made a discovery in the basement of Oxford University Press. After eight years of research in untapped archives, I brought those unheard voices to life in The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the OED (Chatto and Windus).

At METM26, I will share my journey of uncovering and investigating the hidden people of the OED, from the founders of Esperanto to female astronomers, translators, murderers, pornography collectors, and queer couples.

About Sarah

Sarah Ogilvie teaches at the University of Oxford and specializes in language, dictionaries, and technology.

As a lexicographer she has been an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary and was Chief Editor of Oxford Dictionaries in Australia. As a technologist she has worked in Silicon Valley at Lab 126, Amazon’s innovation lab, where she was part of the team that developed the Kindle in languages other than English. She originally studied computer science and mathematics before taking her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Oxford, and then taught at Cambridge and Stanford. She writes a regular column, “The Joy of Lex”, for Prospect magazine.