Thirteen types of generosity -- and H. G. Wells's predictions for English

Words and numbers

H. G. Wells allowed himself to speculate, in his futuristic novel The world set free (1914), on how much the OED would grow as the twentieth century progressed:

Within ten years from the establishment of the World Republic the New English Dictionary [the name under which the Oxford English Dictionary was originally published] had swelled to include a vocabulary of 250,000 words, and a man of 1900 would have found considerable difficulty in reading an ordinary newspaper. On the other hand, the men of the new time could still appreciate the older English literature.

In addition, he highlighted some areas where he thought the language would change:

It was not without some sacrifices that the English-speaking peoples were permitted the satisfaction of hearing their speech used universally. The language was shorn of a number of grammatical peculiarities, the distinctive forms for the subjunctive mood for example, and most of its irregular plurals were abolished; its spelling was systematised and adapted to the vowel sounds in use upon the Continent of Europe, and a process of incorporating foreign nouns and verbs commenced that speedily reached enormous proportions (p. 237).

English may not have gone so far along the road of global simplification and standardization as Wells predicted, but he was too cautious in his estimate of the size of the language. There are many ways of counting the number of entries in a dictionary. According to one count (headwords and defined terms within entries) the First Edition of the OED contained (when it was completed in 1928) 484,041 ‘words’. The same count shows that the Second Edition (incorporating the 1972–86 Supplement) saw this figure rise to 562,550. The current revision has, since 2000, brought the sum total up to 597,291 as of December 2009.

Other counts are rising too. The number of illustrative quotations in the First Edition of the OED was 1,829,078; in the Second Edition 2,517,124; and currently in the Third Edition 3,003,715 – just over the three million mark.

A search through the entries revised over the past ten years shows that some 177,000 subsenses are new or have now been provided with earlier examples (that represents about 80 every working day over the period), and a larger number of 244,750 subsenses have received more up-to-date evidence (over 110 per working day).

Words

The current update to the OED centres round four main words: French, general, information, and technology. French continues the theme of major nouns and adjectives relating to countries (American, English, and Indian are examples of words from this set that have already been revised). General and the words surrounding this in the alphabet allow us to complete the sequence started several releases ago when we published the gene and genetic words. Information and technology, and all of the words in their alphabetical ranges, highlight significant areas of lexical (and cultural) development over the past century.

As well as these high-profile terms, the release also includes a further instalment from the letter R, this time taking us from request to the start of rh. As previously, the re- words have consisted of a steady run of complex and interesting terms. There are not many ‘easy’ words for the editors in this patch.

But to return to one of the four key terms: we can take Frenchwoman. This is one of the words for which the earliest quotation in OED2 comes from Shakespeare (the second part of Henry VI), and indeed there are only two further quotations – in one of which the meaning is ‘a woman of ancient Gaul’. The revised entry shows that, not surprisingly, English-speakers have been talking about Frenchwomen since the Middle Ages (from a text written out around 1450 but probably compiled a century earlier). It is a times like these that we are indebted to the work of earlier lexicographers – in this case those working on the Middle English Dictionary. Further extensive documentation takes evidence for the term through the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, up to the present day.

We see different types of revision in the entry for generous. OED2 gives an extremely short etymology taking the form of the word back through French to Latin, and looking sideways at related Spanish and Italian versions.

The revised etymology traces evidence for the various senses of generous along a timeline in French and Latin, before pointing to a wider range of cognate forms in western and southern Europe. In addition, modern evidence allows us to judge more accurately which subsenses seem to continue a continental model, and which appear to be native creations.

Most of the subsenses of the word (there are thirteen senses for the adjective) are provided with earlier documentation, and yet again this is a word which was formerly first recorded in the works of Shakespeare. The earliest reference now comes from Edward Hellowes's translation from Spanish of Antonio de Guevara's Familiar Letters of 1575. The entry itself reminds the reader that at first generous meant ‘high-born’, ‘noble’. The ‘bountiful’ and ‘open-handed’ sense comes later.

These are some of the major R words in this release:

request, requiem, require, requisite, requisition, requite, rescind, rescue, research, resemblance, resemble, resentment, reservation, reserve, reservoir, reside, residence, residency, resident, residential, residual, residue, resign, resignation, resilient, resin, resist, resistance, resolute, resolution, resolve, resonance, resonant, resort, resound, resource, respect, respectable, respectful, respecting, respective, respell, respiration, respirator, respire, respite, resplendent, respond, respondent, response, responsibility, responsible, responsive, rest, restaurant, restful, restitution, restive, restless, restoration, restorative, restore, restrain, restraint, restrict, restriction, restrictive, restructure, result, resultant, resume, resumption, resupply, resurface, resurrect, resurrection, resuscitate

retail, retain, retainer, retake, retaliate, retard, retarded, retch, retention, retentive, rethink, reticence, reticulate, retina, retinue, retire, retirement, retort, retouch, retrace, retract, retrain, retread, retreat, retrench, retribution, retrieve, retriever, retro, retroactive, retrofit, retroflex, retrograde, retrogression, retrospection, retrospective, retrovirus, retune, return

reunion, reunite, reuse, rev, revalue, revamp, reveal, reveille, revel, revelation, revelatory, revenge, revenue, reverberate, revere, reverence, reverend, reverent, reverential, reverie, reverse, revert, revetment, review, revile, revise, revision, revisit, revival, revive, revoke, revolt, revolting, revolution, revolutionary, revolutionize, revolve, revue, revulsion, reward, rewarding, rewind, rework, rewrite.

The final stages of work on restaurant witnessed a string of surprises. First, the earliest use moved back from 1826 (a description of the Haymarket in London) to 1823 (the Morning Chronicle of 7 July, noting a new eating house in Paris). As we neared the date set for transferring the data to the dictionary's web site, an earlier quotation from 1821 was submitted – this time from New York (the Evening Post for 6 July). But by now it seemed that the earliest references, clustered around 1821 and 1823, were for the spelling restaurat. At the last moment, there was a suggestion of a proposed 1766 quotation from Boswell's journal of his ‘Grand Tour’ on the continent, for ‘restaurant-keeper’. That would have upset the applecart. I'm grateful to John Overholt of the Houghton Library at Harvard, who checked the original manuscript and found that Boswell uses the word ‘traiteur’, which was helpfully anglicized by Boswell's editor in 1955. After the data was transferred to the web site, a further 1821 predating (from England, this time, has come to light: spelling restaurat; in a description of Paris). We'll have to wait for July for that to go online. We can't stop the presses every time a new discovery is made!