My first dip into Lexicography

 

In 1988 I was working in London as a 29-year old, in the Civil Service, in the Department of Education (for UK politics spods, Kenneth Baker was our Secretary of State). I needed to work as we had a nearly one-year-old and no other source of income. It was fairly boring work, reading letters from Education Authorities who wanted our Department's permission to do something. It was very Manilla folder, and many of my colleagues had become slightly Manilla-coloured over their years there. It was about a year before computers arrived on UK desks.

|I saw an ad that said "Have you taught English as a Foreign Language? Would you like to become a Lexicographer?". I thought "Hell yes!", and when my colleagues said 'But you could stay in the Department for the rest of your life', that confirmed me in my decision. I applied, went up to do the practical tests in Harlow (yes, you can do practical tests for lexicography - try this: "Give six different meanings for the word run, also explaining what part of speech each meaning is"), and they said "Yes, you can do this. Do you want a job?". And in August 1988 I started work as a jobbing lexicographer, in which field of work I continued until 2012. And enjoyed it immensely.

And my first job was a real Doozie! I was part of a team of about 15 people tasked to write a completely new reference book, called the Longman Language Activator. I think it is still in print. The idea was simple: Dictionaries tell you the individual meanings of words; a Thesaurus tells you the different ways of expressing a particular idea (NB sometimes we think of it as a list of words with the same meaning, but that is never really true. They have similar meanings, but often they are not interchangeable). The idea with the Activator was to make a Thesaurus that told you how the different 'synonyms' were used, and when to use a particular one. As far as I know the book is still unique, and it was fascinating to write, as you may be starting to appreciate.

So, for example, here are a number of 'synonyms' of the word 'walk': stroll, shamble, strut, swagger. They just happen to all start with 's', but given time I'm sure you could extend that list to maybe fifteen or twenty. But they aren't synonyms, as you'll see. Each one would be right in a particular context, but wrong in several others. I will have a go at an example for one of them, but I would encourage you at home (heh heh) to write good examples for the others.

Mr Doyle the butcher came shambling into McGee's Bar and eased his frame onto the last empty bar stool. 

What does this tell you about the character? If he had strutted or swaggered, what would it have told you?

The lovely thing about working on the project, as well as the smashing team of wildly-varied and experienced colleagues was that we had to make this all up as we went along, simply because no-one, as far as I know, had tried it before. There were so many new practical questions: Which words belong together in a group? How can you rule out phrases (eg, in suddenly you must include quick as a flash and all other obvious phrase synonyms). What about register? What do you say about mush as a form of address, and what do you say about madam?

After about four years, the book was finally published (by then we were all onto our next project). It was successful and has been embedded in lots of electronic resources by now of course. It is over 30 years old now, but still worth a look and a think. 

The impression that remains with me now is not actually the book itself but what it tells you about the wonderful precision of language that we sometimes forget. We have so many ways of tuning our meaning and so many ways that a writer can get right to the heart of the matter by using the right combination of words. It is all there in our heads, a constellation of never-quite-synonyms that can exactly hit the target if you pay attention. I will finish with a quote from Michio Kaku, and American Physicist:

The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.

Amen to that