The Meaning of Everything (Record no. 5345)
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| 000 -LEADER | |
|---|---|
| fixed length control field | 02448nam a2200181 4500 |
| 010 ## - LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER | |
| LC control number | 2004296741 |
| 020 ## - INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER | |
| International Standard Book Number | 9780198607021 |
| 024 ## - OTHER STANDARD IDENTIFIER | |
| Standard number or code | 52830480 |
| 050 ## - LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CALL NUMBER | |
| Classification number | PE1617.O94 |
| 082 ## - DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION NUMBER | |
| Classification number | 423.09 |
| 100 1# - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME | |
| Personal name | Simon Winchester |
| 245 1# - TITLE STATEMENT | |
| Title | The Meaning of Everything |
| 260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. | |
| Name of publisher, distributor, etc. | Oxford University Press |
| 300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION | |
| Extent | 260 pages |
| 520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC. | |
| Summary, etc. | From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary. Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language--"so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy"--and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor Herbert Coleridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making--how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient than anticipated--and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press. We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium--the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it--and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project--a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivalled uber-dictionary. |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM | |
| Topical term or geographic name entry element | Language |
| Withdrawn status | Lost status | Damaged status | Not for loan | Home library | Current library | Date acquired | Total checkouts | Full call number | Barcode | Date last seen | Copy number | Price effective from | Koha item type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lake Chapala Society | Lake Chapala Society | 07/17/2024 | 424 WINCH | 47365 | 07/17/2024 | 1 | 07/17/2024 | Book |