The Dictionary of Lost Words: Language of Women Ignored in the OED

Novel By Pip Williams

The Importance of Dictionaries

The Christmas before we graduated from High School, each one of the Johnson girls received a standard present from my mother, a kind of rite-of-passage gift that was both meaningful and absolutely necessary (according to Mother) for our academic success.

We each were gifted with a hardbacked copy of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, (mine had a bright red cover with gold letters,) and a thick Roget's Thesaurus. "Indiana University, here we come!" was the family sentiment, and each of us left the following August fully armed with what we needed to succeed, at least according to my mother, Molly Johnson.

I thought of that big red dictionary that I had for many, many years as I read Pip Williams' novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, a story that focuses on the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, while at the same time building a plotline that explores the words of women that were intentionally omitted.

Could you compile a dictionary?

Nowadays, most people go online to find a definition or the spelling of a word. Often, they simply ask their phone, and AI responds with the right answer.

But I remember, with nostalgia, writing a paper and plopping open the dictionary to find a word I needed. Invariably, I would get distracted by words I'd never seen before, perusing definitions, and running my fingers down hundreds of lines of inky black letters, hoping the words would flow into my fingertips through touch.

No matter how much I appreciated my dictionary, I could never imagine a time when such a tool didn't exist. No way could I wrap my head around how you would compile one, cataloguing hundreds of thousands of words in ways that had never been done before. (How in the world would you ever keep track of those words?)

A Narrative History of Dictionaries

Long before the Oxford English Dictionary became the grand authority we know today, English speakers were already wrestling with their wonderfully unruly language. The earliest efforts to corral words were humble little guides. In 1604, schoolmaster Robert Cawdrey put together A Table Alphabeticall, a slim booklet meant to help “ladies, gentlewomen, and other unskilled folk” decipher unfamiliar “hard words.” It wasn’t an attempt to capture the language, just to make reading a bit less intimidating.

Over the next century, others added their pieces: Thomas Blount tried to explain where words came from; John Kersey made strides toward standard spellings. But these early dictionaries were narrow in purpose. They lit only tiny pockets of English, never daring to map the whole terrain.

Then Samuel Johnson arrived in 1755 with a dictionary that was equal parts scholarship and personality. Johnson pulled lines from literature to show how writers actually used words, and in doing so, he shaped how generations thought English ought to sound. But even Johnson knew he hadn’t captured everything. English was simply too vast and too alive.

But a century later, James Murray believed a comprehensive dictionary of the English language COULD be created, one that included every word used in the language, and explain where that word came from, and how it changed over time, too!

Under James Murray’s patient leadership, volunteers around the world copied quotations onto slips of paper and mailed them to his Scriptorium, creating a massive, democratic archive of how people used language in real life. The birth of the Oxford English Dictionary!

What made the OED different wasn’t its size (though it became colossal) but its philosophy. Instead of declaring what English should be, it attempted to record what English was — messy, mutable, and full of stories. Every word was treated as a small history. And since the work was ongoing and time-consuming, the first OED was published in volumes, not all words at one time! The process of compiling, editing, and printing the entire set of volumes in the OED was forty years!

A little girl named Esme, the Scriptorium, and The Dictionary of Lost Words

The Dictionary of Lost Words is a look at not only how the Oxford English Dictionary was created under the direction of James Murray, but also how it omitted the words of women.

Esme is the motherless daughter of Harry Nicoll, one of the lexicographers working with Mr. Murray on the compilation of the dictionary. Because Esme's mother died, Harry does his best as a single father to raise Esme, with the help of the Murray's faithful servant girl named Lizzie. Harry Nicoll brings Esme to work at the Scriptorium (the glorified shed where the research and storage of words were done) every single day where she sits under the desk and begins to collect the slips of paper that have been discarded because they will not be included in the dictionary.

Even a dictionary as ambitious as the OED is shaped by the voices it includes… and the ones it overlooks. Much of the material volunteers read came from books written by educated men, which means that countless everyday expressions — especially women’s words, domestic words, working-class words — never made it into the Scriptorium at all.

The passing from childhood to womanhood

As Esme gets older and faces her own painful trials, many of them brought on because she hasn't had the guidance of a mother, she begins to understand how much the language of women is disregarded and undervalued. In addition to the discarded words she's collected over the years, Esme begins her own research, interviewing women from all walks of life to find words that may not be used in polite society but which are important to women all the same.

Esme's Aunt Ditte, is a highly educated single woman and a prolific contributor to the dictionary in the novel. Her character is modeled after a real-life female word-finder named Edith Thompson. One of the delights of the book is how it captures the time period...the rise of women's suffrage and the changing roles of women. James Murray's daughters go to university, and Emmeline Pankhurst, a real-life political activitist for the rights of women, is a character in the book, as are actresses, servants, prostitutes, and women of the lower working classes.

The Dictionary's progress is impeded when World War I starts, and we see not just the toll on the publication, but on the common people who were caught in a conflict that rattled the World, Esme included.

Can a dictionary ever include everything?

Pip Williams’s novel reminds us that every dictionary, no matter how grand, has its silences. It preserves the English we can see on the page, but it can never quite hold the whole of the English we actually speak, or keep pace with the speed at which the meanings of words change.

The Dictionary of Lost Words emphasizes that it is the powerful majority that decides what to save and promote. The words of the disenfranchised, downtrodden, or minorities - in this case women, were ignored.

Enjoyable. Edifying. Engaging.

I did not breeze through The Dictionary of Lost Words. It was not an action-packed thriller, but rather an enjoyable, edifying, engaging trek of growth, pain, pleasure, and passion of those people who devoted their lives to publishing the Oxford English Dictionary.

If you like history, words, women's rights, and a good story, don't miss The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams.

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