John Simpson

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John Simpson, Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford English Dictionary (1993–2013)

John Simpson (born October 13, 1953 in Cheltenham ) is a prominent English lexicographer and was editor-in-chief of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) from 1993 to 2013 .

Life

John Simpson was born in Cheltenham, where his father worked for the secret service. He attended Dean Close School and then studied English literature in York and Medieval studies in Reading . From 1976 he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. He was co-editor of the second edition of the OED from 1989 in 20 volumes on 21,728 pages. From 1993 to 2013 he was editor-in-chief and headed a team of 70 editors. Simpson was responsible for the groundbreaking transfer of the print edition to an online database, which allows the dictionary to be continuously revised, expanded and updated, so that the third edition of the work will in all probability no longer appear in a print edition. The online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary receives well over a million hits a month.

John Simpson is a member of the English faculty at Oxford University and Professor Emeritus at Kellogg College , Oxford. He was a consultant for the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano and the Australian National Dictionary . He is also a founding member of the European Federation of National Institutions for Language, of which he is a member of the Executive Committee. Simpson received honorary degrees from the Australian National University and the University of Leicester. In 2014 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services to literature . In 2011, together with Joyce researcher and translator Harald Beck, he founded the electronic journal James Joyce Online Notes , a forum for the documentation of people, realities and language in the writer's work.

Works

  • Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (1982)
  • Oxford English Dictionary (Co-Editor with Edmund Weiner), (Second Edition), Clarendon Press, Oxford (1989)
  • "English Lexicography after Johnson to 1945", in FJ Hausmann et al. (eds.), Dictionaries: An Internationales Handbuch zur Lexicographie, Volume 2, 1953–1966; Walter de Gruyter, Berlin (1990)
  • Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang (with John Ayto) (1992).
  • "The OED and collaborative research into the history of English", in Anglia, 122, 2, 185-208 (2002)
  • "Reliable authority: tabloids, film, email, and speech as sources for dictionaries" in Jean Aitchison and Diana M. Lewis (eds.) New Media Language, 187-92. (2003)
  • The Word Detective. A Life in Words: From Serendipity to Selfie, London 2016

Forewords to:

  • Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, Oxford (2007)
  • BE's Dictionary of the Canting Crew, Oxford (2011)
  • Francis Grose's Popular Superstitions, Oxford (2011)
  • James Redding Ware's Victorian Dictionary of Slang and Phrase, Oxford (2013)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "John Simpson, Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, to retire". Oxford English Dictionary. 2013
  2. ^ "An Exit Interview With the Man Who Transformed the Oxford English Dictionary". Time Magazine . April 23, 2013.
  3. ↑ http://www.efnil.org/
  4. ^ John Andrew Simpson, Citation for an Honorary Degree, Australian National University, Honorary graduates
  5. ↑ http://www2.le.ac.uk/news/blog/2015-archive-1/january/university-honours-distinguished-figures-in-the-arts
  6. ^ The London Gazette : (Supplement) no. 60895. p. b15. 14 June 2014
  7. ↑ http://www.jjon.org
personal data
SURNAME Simpson, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English linguist, literary scholar, lexicographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Cheltenham