For a complete Television Schedule booktv. Org. Book two three, 72 hours hours of nonfiction books and authors. Television or serious readers. We kick off this Holiday Weekend with former chief editor of the Oxford English dictionary john simpson on his book the word detective. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. My name is davids shoulders. On behalf of the staff and our owners bizarre its hard to walking into politics and prose to host john simpson for his book the word detective searching for the meaning of it all at the Oxford English dictionary. I have a few housekeeping notes. If you will take in a cell phones and noisemaking devices and silence those at this time so we dont have any unnecessary interruptions, that would be great. We will also mention that we are, cspan booktv is here today and they will be filming the event. We are doing our own recording as well, and so john will come speak to us for about a half hour and then we will have another half are for questions and answers. With a microphone stationed. Anyway, after the event is over if you will help us, we put the bookstore back together. So if you will take your chair and folded up and leaning against something sturdy that would be a great help to us. Also the books are available to, purchase at the cash register. Te if you havent already done so and then after the event is all over the signing will immediately follow writer at this table. So can you drink of balderdash . What he called the part of a dogs back they cant scratch . If serendipitously you find yourself in sandip then where are you . The answers and great many more can be found in the pages of the Oxford English dictionary, the definitive record of the english language. Theres no better guide to the dictionary as many wonderment and a former chief editor john simpson. The word detective, a a personal memoir and a joyful celebration of english, he weaves a story about words come into being and sometimes disappear, how cultures shapes language we use and how technology has conformed not only the way we speak and write but also how words are made. The book reviews, its awaiting them are from a dictionary editor who insist he is not a quote word lover. A captivating celebration of a life among words. John simpson was the chief editor of the Oxford English dictionary for 20 years until 2013 and during his tenure to manage the digitization of the dictionary and initiated itsir third edition scheduled for completion in 2037 took over sing some 70 editors at the time. Time. John is an emeritus fellow and rights and research is wide on literary and historical issues. He now coedits the james joyce notes on the rhine online. Please join me in welcoming john simpson. [applause] good evening. Ive never been filled so much at one time, except maybe when im walking down the streets in london. Anyway, i havent got a publisher with me today. What ive done its is ive invented a publisher to introduce me. Hes called to go. Hes not my publisher. He sort of amalgam of whatt publishers used to be like in the old days. Hes called to go. Welcome to everyone. Im absolutely delighted welcome to everyone. Im absolutely delighted that so many people have come along tonight to celebrate the publication of johns book. Much of which ive already read on the train. Id like to ask john a fewquestion questions about the word detective and help those of you have not read it to the end will get an oppression why im told we are so keen to publisher. John, you spent many years working on the Oxford English dictionary. O why did you write this memoir and how does it differ from other accounts of the oed . Then he hands it over to me. I wrote the word detective because i wanted, i have have read so many books about the history of the oed, the problems between the editors and the publishing staff, all the the difficulty in the 1970 getting the book together. Ul its a massive book, and nasa project but actually that misses the fun of writing, document the history of words which is what exit called it is all about. All i was trying to do was to enthuse people to enjoy writing about the history and researching each of their language. How i people ask how i came to write the book and its pretty straightforward. About six months before i left the University Press in oxford in 2013, for some reason the press department put out a press release is how i was leaving. I think possibly just very pleased. But anyway, i i did know why they did this. They put out a press release and various newspapers got hold of it and he ran stories like oed his cheeks were detective leaves after 37 years. Thats what i got the idea of the word detective from. And then i did various interviews, Time Magazine did an interview for me. That was instrumental interview. It was a question and answer and it was interesting. So many journalists come along to the oed and they come along with their preconceptions of us in long white beards, all male, ive always been all male. We spend our time staring at our desks and writing Outlook Index cards with definitions on. In some way thats true but really its a stereotype of lexicography which i was trying b to avoid writing the book. As a result of that, i got a phone call from david kuhn loser new York Literary agent, saying i thought you were quite interesting as you came over in the Time Magazine piece. Do you think theres any point in thinking about writing a book about your experience on the dictionary . And if so, maybe we can take you around to some publishers and see what they think. I said im far too busy at the moment. Ive got six months ago, very,hs very important work. Lets talk about it when i finish. Six months later i was out of the door and i thought well, lets give it a try, see if we can make dictionary work sound fun to people. The stereotypes of some that have dogged me throughout my 30 3740 years on the oed and the introduction to the book i wrote a little piece about this sort of stereotyping that we get in books and films. I was talking about the excitement of writing dictionaries. This is a very specific kind of excitement. Its different from the excitement portrayed in ball of fire, my favorite film about reference books. I used to play a few minutes of this 1941 screwball comedy to groups of summer scores i taught years ago. I suspect they thought it was the best part of the court in the film the erudite looking gary cooper is a grammarian entity of editors engaged in a noble task of writing encyclopedia. The professors had quiet lives the sort that quite and fits into the vibrant work of dictionary editing. In particular, they are unfamiliar with the potential of jive talk and hip cats. As luck would have it gary cooper stumbles across Barbara Stanwyck disguised as a nightclub singer sugar push oshea. He and his cell editors rather take a shine to her. They stink out at night to listen to her vocabulary, so they say. Gary cooper is asked them benefit from his integument for sugar posts and sugar buzz is eventually rescued from numerous potential mishaps by the kindly hearted editors. This is not exactly how things worked on the Oxford English dictionary. We never knowingly called anyone sugar puss. Thats a sort of story tight but it does indicate excitement that i felt in the work when i was working there. So in the book that are sort of forming aspects i wanted to draw into it. Original wanted to write a book that was just a book of the decorations about words come interesting things i would find out about words and how i approached them. You had to come to words from the site. They never go headon. You are always looking at strange aspects of, looking at how people use words in the past, trying to sort of push, when you read a a sense of a 17th century cake, trying to push it out of shape so it helps you to understand the definition of the actual word you are working on. Its sort of a strange way of looking at things but i always like to look at things sideways rather than front on. What i i wanted to talk about the language, how its changed overua the time i was at the dictionary. The background of the book is its more or less starts when i play for jump on the dictionary and it finishes more or less today. Theres no early life, i was in school, had, had a lovely time doing whatever, my first girlfriend or anything like that. Unfortunately, maybe that will be volume two, but it starts with applying for a job can find a job on the dictionary and i go from there. Its a bit about of my life, my friends, friends of addiction friends outside the dictionary my family. But ibut i interweave that with i think about 60 little boxes about words. Take the word like paraphernalia or 101 as a kind of classicac college, and track the history of that overtime, as far as the oed is able to demonstrate it. I have of you that any word in the language is interesting if he just spent five minutes to do a little bit of research about it and then write it up. I talked about the words, the language and the time of addiction,addiction, how we went from addiction in book form to the dictionary on computer computer, which is what it is now. And how were opening up access for people to read the dictionary by putting it online over a long period. John, that is a very dashing this mac this if you go again. Thats a very convincing answer. When i read the odd passage from the book on the train i was surprised at the informality of the style. Can you talk about how you can find writing about a very formalro and revered document such as the Oxford English dictionary . Perhaps youd like to read as short section to give us a flavor of the book. Th when i first joined the oed in 1976, i had not been at oxford before. I had been at york studying english, and oxford, it was quite a forbidding place. And i think at the time oxford scholarship, the arts addiction was something that was held in all and it was quite difficult for people, especially new editors to unravel that, to see through what was there and what were trying to do, that which is really trying to explain the meaning and history of words. So part of years i was there was really getting myself into what the dictionary was trying to do and sort of becoming less in awe of it. I think all of the staff when they joined went through this procedure. To give you some idea of what it was like as a new editor, i thought i would read a bit from the book about my first interview at the University Press. Es i had been living in reading, about 50 miles away, and i was doing an ma in medieval studies. Ud didnt think it would fit me for too much in the world, and then again i found that it did, whichd was great. Because we always find, we often find that people with a medieval background actually a pretty wellsuited for looking at words, but back from the medieval period into the old english. And right up to the present day whereas if you only have a history of knowing about language in the 19 19th century,fi you find it more difficult to deal with 16th, 17th century medieval so it is, it did in the internet to be useful to have that sort of background. T anyway, i have been called interview, and the University Press porter let me into the grand quadrangle, or quad. Before had a chance to reach the sumptuous lunch i was directed out to one side. En you didnt expect the full y splendor of the place unless you deserved it. Or i found the personal department and my recentpa correspondent the colonel. El the colonel was a human face of the personal department and he was a delightful military chap, retired of course in something of a leftover from the days when old soldiers ruled personnel. He was certainly more of a character actor wilford hyde white, colonel pickering of my fair lady. Quite short, deborah, balding, chatty and military. Ng we shook hands and then he sank in his seat behind a substantial desk while i was directed towards an easy chair designed principally to make you feel that you were not the most important person in the room. We talked about magnets of history at the University Press as seems to the eyes of the personal department and we wondered how easily i must find a reading to oxford, if i i were fortunate enough to be offered the position. The distance with 25 off but i discovered later there were people who thought civilization ended just a few hundred feet outside the old city walls. Others are said to say the sun rises over the collagen sets over worchester. Worchester college of is. Wouldnt be much point in referring to the city of i worchester. I have my little interview with him and then he takes the read to the picture department at a meet the chief editor and never interviewed ethics. I will leave you to discover whatwhether i got the job or not. [laughter] but you can see im trying not to write the sort of book when you go from footnote to footnote discussing the particular policies and all that sort of thing. I was really just trying to write and approachable, i hope reasonably entertaining book about my time at the oed. We will get onto words in a few minutes. John, this is me. Its not somebody else actually. Thats a very convincing answer. [laughter] its great when you are in charge of your script. Im told by the editors as it were detected you and dispersed the text with educational snippets about the history of english. Is this a true . Has pick up already explained what i wanted to do was to take words, so many books about language take this sort of wellknown examples of words and take you through them. If you read any history of english, you will find descriptions of the words are in all the other descriptions of history. And if i if i saw working new paragraph i had just written which i thought was of interest, i check it in the oed, check with the story was, in the just write it out for my perspective. But with the facts that are in the oed. Bu so on the one hand i was showing you the detail of the oed holds but also trying to approach it in a way that was readable. This was quite a difficult diction or to read sometimes. If you are not familiar with it. This is an example of one of the little books i had with the word transpire. I dont know if you are aware of the meaning transpire but i have about 60 of these word boxes that describe individual words so if you will go with me withll this we will see what happens to transpire. Ive got one on, i dont know, omnibus and bus. All sorts of things. Ngs. They are quite fun. In the mid to late 18th century the verb transpire cause no end of argues between otherwise healthy individuals. There were people who think the word should mean what they used to mean and any deviation from this is heresy, a fallacy. It somehow related in its origin to latin ignorant. Logic is argument over words for the greek lover for work. Transpire at least its aged equivalent as a little meeting in classical latin but over the centuries English Speakers have to use the technical term mangled of this. The word transpire is known in english from the latter end of the 16th century and it derived from latin, trance as an across transsiberian, et cetera, to breathe, inspiration, spirit, et cetera. To so you expect it to mean something to do with transmission by breathing. Heres how the oed views that whole meeting. Two calls to pass an estate of vapor through the walls or service of the body, especially to give up our discharge waste matter from the body through the skin. So thats of the old meaning of the word. As we move through the 17th century the range of context in which the term could be employed to grows but the core meaning remains constant, perspiration comes into rather vaguely. Liquid passing from inside or outside or from outside doing. It turned out to be quite useful work and emerging sciences of the early modern period and was heading for stardom. The first hiccup on the road to the hotel occurred in 1748. It concerned the lord chesterfield who as a style leader later annoyed dr. Johnson by withdrawing support on his proposed dictionary when the noble lord realized it was burning off plan i. E. Johnson accepted language changes and wasnt necessary inching nearer to affection of addiction should be open to this. In 1748 lord chesterfield rather ironically and despite his gentle clowns on language of change decided to use the verb transpire in a figurative way. It was new to english though not too french. When writing to what is cosponsored this is what he wrote. Ro this letter goes to you you in that confidence which i place in you and you will therefore not let one word of it transpire. Tely n theres nothing wrong with that should you be the sort pushing to find things wrong with language. The french have developed this earlier in the 18th century. What lord chesterfield was saying was he did not want one word in the content of his letter to permeate from this current secret private state through to public view. Publi the development from the physical transpiration to the medical for one is easy and unexceptional but when it came to address the word in his dictionary dr. Johnson found even this minor semantic shift too much. S innovative from france without necessity. What happened next set language periods into a deep decline. According to the oed it was an american lady, Abigail Adams wife of the second president of the United States who is credited with writing in 1775 to husband of the Continental Congress in philadelphia, there is nothing you transpired since i were to last. Im sure others used it in this way before she is but at the moment she has all the credit. Language appears hated this new meaning to occur, to happen. What, no permeation or only permeation of transmigration of the looses a variety of innocence at something moving something moving from one state, nothing happening, to another state, something happening. Organic change should that happen in the plight 18 century. The fact that it might well be a mechanism and americans are not really on top of anyone to dance card in britain. Probably made the usage even less popular in britain than itt might have been. The First Edition of the oedof the thats in the letter t from early 20 century, despairs despairs. It is a misuse. The dictionary offer some assistance. Evidently arising from misunderstandings such as afrom mis sense as what had transpired during his absence he did not know. Which is itself an idiomatic and confusing way of saying something. The oed was following in the footsteps of earlier lexicographer such of the american