Charles Talbut Onions
Charles Talbut Onions (born September 10, 1873 in Birmingham , † January 8, 1965 ) was a British lexicographer and English specialist. In 1933 he was with William Craigie (1867-1957) editor of the first supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and before that the fourth editor of the OED.
Onions attended the King Edwards School (where he first came into contact with lexicography under the influence of the headmaster AJ Smith) and studied at Mason College, later the University of Birmingham, with a bachelor's degree from the University of London in 1892 and a master's degree in 1895. Im In the same year he was invited by James Murray to work on the OED and in 1914 he became one of the editors with his own assistants (among other things responsible for the last entries, the letters X, Y, Z). From 1922 he was editor of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and from 1933 the first supplement volumes of the OED.
He was a fellow and from 1940 to 1945 librarian at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a reader from 1927 to 1949 . There the editor of the second supplement Robert Burchfield was his student. He was friends with Burchfield, later supported him in his editing of the second supplement and, conversely, drew Burchfield for his etymology.
In addition to his actual lexical work at the OED, he also wrote a Shakespeare glossary and a book about England in Shakespeare's time and an English grammar.
From 1929 to 1933 he was President of the Philological Society . In 1938 he became a Fellow of the British Academy and an honorary doctorate from Oxford Universities (Honorary Masters there), Leeds and Birmingham. In 1934 he became a CBE .
In 1945 he succeeded Raymond Wilson Chambers as Honorary Director of the Early English Text Society. From 1932 to 1956 he was editor of the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature's Medium Aevum magazine.
After the war he devoted himself to completing The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology , which covered 38,000 words and was published in 1966.
In 1907 he married Angela Blythman (1883–1941), with whom he had seven sons and three daughters. During the First World War he worked for the British naval intelligence service in his capacity as an expert on the German language.
Fonts
- An Advanced English Syntax, 1904
- A Shakespeare glossary. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911; further, revised editions there in 1919 and 1929.
- Shakespeare's England: An Account of the Life and Manners of His Age, 2 volumes, 1916
- Publisher: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1933
- with William Craigie: Supplement to the OED, 1933
- The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 1966
literature
- JAW Bennett: Charles Talbut Onions, 1873-1965 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 65 , 1980, pp. 743-759 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).
See also
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Onions, Charles Talbut |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English lexicographer and Anglist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 10, 1873 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Birmingham |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 8, 1965 |