Jonathon Green is a longtime favorite here at LH (e.g., 2014, 2018); now he has posted a cri de coeur called The End Is Nigh (and we can all be grateful I didn’t use that as my post title):
I am 76 and change. I cannot continue for ever. But it is my wish that my lexicon should. OK, not forever, a dangerous promise, but I would certainly prefer that the ‘book’ should not vanish alongside its creator. GDoS offers 738 synonyms for ‘death’, ‘dead’ and ‘die’ and I see no reason to stop things there. Up till now continuation has been simple: I want another dictionary? that the last edition is now out of date and should now merely prefigure its replacement? then sit down at the screen for yet another day or many more, and make one. But without a sitter? Here comes the problem. […]
Off the top of my head the only major dictionary (multi-volume, working on ‘historical principles’, which means usage examples or citations) that one might term ‘future proofed’ is Oxford’s OED. (Smaller ones, aimed at school/college presumably are more likely to appear, even in print). And we know from its histories, whether that of Katharine Murray or more recently Peter Gilliver, the extent to which every day of its existence has been a struggle against those who are allegedly its supporters and financiers. Bean-counters will count, whether Master of Balliol or otherwise. Publishers, however grand, are ‘trade’ and trade seeks, depends on profit. They may not tell you so as the flattery dances across that initiatory lunch table but thus it is. And if ‘they’ must be dragged like a genuinely unwilling Speaker when it comes to the national treasure that is the OED, am I really to expect a rush to support the unveiling of yet another synonym for gherkin-jerking?
So we have, thank goodness, Oxford. Is it the last lexicon standing? Is there, say, a US equivalent any longer? I don’t believe so (though I am wholly willing to suffer knowledgeable corrections on all my assumptions). Webster’s Third appeared in 1961 (amongst much controversy -who’d have thought the word ‘ain’t’ would be so terrifying?) and that mighty tome never arrived at a fourth edition though of course Merriam-Webster remains a power in the land. French? The Trésor de la Langue Française began publishing its 16 volumes in 1971, but shut up shop on ‘completion’ in 1994, leaving only an online facsimile with no intention of revision. Le Grand Robert is the go-to dictionnaire now, but while it offers some cites, it does not embrace full ‘historical principles’. German? Well, the great Deutsches Wörterbuch, pioneered by the Grimm brothers in 1838 and ‘finished’ (32 volumes) in 1961 is working on an update but we had better not hold our breath. Down Under? Better news: the Australian National Dictionary (with multiple citations) published a second edition in 2016 and the rival Macquarie reached its tenth, ever expanding edition in 2023 (again, sans citations).
He goes into the sad history of his various slang dictionaries (“The new owners, somewhat higher up the Pacman scale wherein saurian publishers munched on each other’s still-warm vitals, informed me that the contract would hold and that they would publish, ‘if we have to’”) and concludes:
Thanks to a legacy, itself properly Victorian in its unexpectedness and its munificence, I have been able to assume that desirable but on the whole vanished role: the ‘gentleman scholar’ (I suggest the word ‘independent’ is more my style. There is much solitude, but I have no problems with that. Scholar? Eyes of the beholder, I guess.) In other words working very hard without an actual income. This has proved useful: no-one, as I have noted, has offered me one. Between 2010 and 2014, when my digital saviour emerged via what was then a Twitter that still worked for good rather than its antithesis, I searched for a patron. Publishers simply barred their door. Academic institutions pleaded either lack of funds or of digital skills. Businesses asked ‘what’s in it for us’ and at my answer ‘the pleasure of supporting something of value’ only managed to halt their laughter when they realised they must summon an underling to escort the loony from their premises.
Why should any of that change? That’s the question now. Like ‘retire’ the word ‘monetize’ remains a stranger to my database. (If there are two stereotypes of my race – the pedlar and the Talmudic scholar – I am a half-assed version of the latter.) I can, on the other hand, write letters and I shall. Back in 2010 I essentially arranged my own publicity and begged acquaintances for reviews. I can unlock that box again. My co-conspirators will undoubtedly have their own suggestions. It is a decade since I last searched and much has changed. Let us see.
Meanwhile, work beckons. Time for another look at Sydney Baker’s list of ‘Australian Vulgarisms’. How’s about a quick sandscratch? Now that’s my comfort zone.
I take off my many hats to a fellow independent scholar. Long may he grouse!
“ I take off my many hats to a fellow independent scholar. Long may he grouse!”
In true Bartholomew Cubbins mode, https://pictures.abebooks.com/inventory/1167496806.jpg,
I too uncover a skull older than Mr. Green’s in a show of appreciation and gratitude.
“ grouse v.1
[? OF groucier, to murmur, to grumble]
(orig. milit.) to grumble, to complain; thus grouser n., one who grumbles; grousy adj., ill-tempered, complaining”.
source: https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/kbuxnya
Jonathon is eloquent as ever, but his headline seems to portend doom which is not necessarily imminent. Like my father – who is two years older, and of much the same mindset about the septuagenarian state – Jonathon has described himself as if he were at death’s door every time I have spoken to him since 2014, when we first met. Since, then as now, he has no intention of retiring, I don’t see any real reason to think that his time working on GDoS will be coming to an end any time soon.
Long may he drudge. Harmlessly, of course.
Jonathon Green is one of those rare people who has produced great work on two completely different worlds. I have never really followed his collecting of slang, but I do know him as the documenter of the London counterculture of the 1960s – the collection of oral histories he edited, Days in the Life, is a desert-island book for me. Unfortunately, his loss of the libel lawsuit brought by Caroline Coon in the early millennium seems to have permanently steered him away from further writing on the 1960s and towards exclusive focus on slang.
Like my father – who is two years older, and of much the same mindset about the septuagenarian state – Jonathon has described himself as if he were at death’s door every time I have spoken to him since 2014, when we first met.
Although I’m 75, I am not inclined to strike poses in front of death’s door. I regard such Eeyore behavior as a male counterpart to the trad-wife complaint of urban mythology: “I can’t go out, I don’t have a thing to wear!”