Misplaced Pages

#682317

137-674: The Oxford English Dictionary traces use of the word "plutonists" to 1799, and the appearance of the word plutonism to 1842. Abbé Anton Moro , who had studied volcanic islands, first proposed the theory before 1750, and James Hutton subsequently developed it as part of his Theory of the Earth , published in 1788, which used rock formations at Glen Tilt in Perthshire as the prime example supporting his theory; an example used by Neptunism to prove their theory as well. The idea contested Abraham Werner's neptunist theory which proposed that

274-593: A Philological Society project of a small group of intellectuals in London (and unconnected to Oxford University ): Richard Chenevix Trench , Herbert Coleridge , and Frederick Furnivall , who were dissatisfied with the existing English dictionaries. The society expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844, but it was not until June 1857 that they began by forming an "Unregistered Words Committee" to search for words that were unlisted or poorly defined in current dictionaries. In November, Trench's report

411-407: A 1753 letter he wrote that he had "become very fond of studying the surface of the earth, and was looking with anxious curiosity into every pit or ditch or bed of a river that fell in his way". Clearing and draining his farm provided ample opportunities. The mathematician John Playfair described Hutton as having noticed that "a vast proportion of the present rocks are composed of materials afforded by

548-748: A 1985 agreement, some of this software work was done at the University of Waterloo , Canada, at the Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary , led by Frank Tompa and Gaston Gonnet ; this search technology went on to become the basis for the Open Text Corporation . Computer hardware, database and other software, development managers, and programmers for the project were donated by the British subsidiary of IBM ;

685-407: A beginning,–no prospect of an end." His memorably phrased closing statement has long been celebrated. (It was quoted in the 1989 song " No Control " by songwriter and professor Greg Graffin . ) Following criticism, especially the arguments from Richard Kirwan who thought Hutton's ideas were atheistic and not logical, Hutton published a two volume version of his theory in 1795, consisting of

822-596: A concise, clear manner, “keeping Hutton's approach alive” following his death in 1797, as other scientists interpreted his theory in their own manner. Additionally, John Playfair would argue Plutonism being the correct theory as opposed to Neptunism. In 1830, a scientist named Charles Lyell, founded uniformitarianism . In 1830, Lyell published the Principles of Geology , in which the Earth is an equilibrium state, where biological, chemical and physical processes have occurred slowly over an extreme amount of time, resulting in

959-476: A confirmation of his supposition that these beds had been laid horizontally in water. He also found conglomerate at altitudes that demonstrated the extent of erosion of the strata, and said of this that "we never should have dreamed of meeting with what we now perceived". Hutton reasoned that there must have been innumerable cycles, each involving deposition on the seabed , uplift with tilting and erosion then undersea again for further layers to be deposited. On

1096-624: A factor to manage this business. Hutton inherited from his father the Berwickshire farms of Slighhouses , a lowland farm which had been in the family since 1713, and the hill farm of Nether Monynut . In the early 1750s he moved to Slighhouses and set about making improvements, introducing farming practices from other parts of Britain and experimenting with plant and animal husbandry. He recorded his ideas and innovations in an unpublished treatise on The Elements of Agriculture . This developed his interest in meteorology and geology. In

1233-411: A fascicle of 64 pages, priced at 2s 6d. If enough material was ready, 128 or even 192 pages would be published together. This pace was maintained until World War I forced reductions in staff. Each time enough consecutive pages were available, the same material was also published in the original larger fascicles. Also in 1895, the title Oxford English Dictionary was first used. It then appeared only on

1370-496: A larger project. Trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary. Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips. Later the same year, the society agreed to the project in principle, with the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles ( NED ). Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) played

1507-831: A meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 4 July 1785; the full account of his theory as read at 7 March 1785 and 4 April 1785 meetings did not appear in print until 1788. It was titled Theory of the Earth ; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe and appeared in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , vol. I, Part II, pp. 209–304, plates I and II, published 1788. He put forward

SECTION 10

#1732764811683

1644-433: A one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the second edition was published, comprising 21,728 pages in 20 volumes. Since 2000, compilation of a third edition of the dictionary has been underway, approximately half of which was complete by 2018. In 1988, the first electronic version of the dictionary was made available, and the online version has been available since 2000. By April 2014, it

1781-563: A peculiar way". Murray had American philologist and liberal arts college professor Francis March manage the collection in North America; 1,000 quotation slips arrived daily to the Scriptorium and, by 1880, there were 2,500,000. The first dictionary fascicle was published on 1 February 1884—twenty-three years after Coleridge's sample pages. The full title was A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on

1918-444: A possible mechanism affecting them: Hutton gave the example that where dogs survived through "swiftness of foot and quickness of sight... the most defective in respect of those necessary qualities, would be the most subject to perish, and that those who employed them in greatest perfection... would be those who would remain, to preserve themselves, and to continue the race". Equally, if an acute sense of smell became "more necessary to

2055-499: A project, that was so incredibly complicated and that met every deadline." By 1989, the NOED project had achieved its primary goals, and the editors, working online, had successfully combined the original text, Burchfield's supplement, and a small amount of newer material, into a single unified dictionary. The word "new" was again dropped from the name, and the second edition of the OED, or

2192-657: A red dye made from the roots of the madder plant. He had a house built in 1770 at St John's Hill, Edinburgh, overlooking Salisbury Crags . This later became the Balfour family home and, in 1840, the birthplace of the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne . Hutton was one of the most influential participants in the Scottish Enlightenment , and fell in with numerous first-class minds in the sciences including mathematician John Playfair , philosopher David Hume and economist Adam Smith . Hutton held no position in

2329-516: A shareholder and as a member of the committee of management, and attended meetings including extended site inspections of all the works. At this time he is listed as living on Bernard Street in Leith . In 1777 he published a pamphlet on Considerations on the Nature, Quality and Distinctions of Coal and Culm which successfully helped to obtain relief from excise duty on carrying small coal. In 1783, he

2466-406: A short period of time by means of catastrophe, but that processes still happening on the Earth in the present day had caused them. As these processes were very gradual, the Earth needed to be ancient, to allow time for the changes. Contemporary investigations had shown that the geologic record required vast time, but no good way of assigning actual years was found for over a century (Rudwick, Bursting

2603-407: A single enormous flood. Hutton proposed that the interior of the Earth was hot, and that this heat was the engine which drove the creation of new rock: land was eroded by air and water and deposited as layers in the sea; heat then consolidated the sediment into stone, and uplifted it into new lands. This theory was dubbed " Plutonist " in contrast to the flood-oriented theory. As well as combating

2740-410: A sufficient temperature, resulting in the formation of “a more silicic andesite” composition, which is less dense than the original basaltic magma. This allows magma to proceed through the crust, resulting in the occurrence of explosive volcanoes. Volcanic rocks form from the lava cooling on the Earth's surface. However, in the event when the occurrence of subduction or temperature within the magma chamber

2877-414: A total of 11 fascicles had been published, or about one per year: four for A–B , five for C , and two for E . Of these, eight were 352 pages long, while the last one in each group was shorter to end at the letter break (which eventually became a volume break). At this point, it was decided to publish the work in smaller and more frequent instalments; once every three months beginning in 1895 there would be

SECTION 20

#1732764811683

3014-643: Is believed that James Hutton returned to Britain shortly after his promotion. After his degree Hutton went to London, then in mid-1750 returned to Edinburgh and resumed chemical experiments with close friend, John Davie. Their work on production of sal ammoniac from soot led to their partnership in a profitable chemical works, manufacturing the crystalline salt which was used for dyeing, metalworking and as smelling salts and had been available only from natural sources and had to be imported from Egypt . Hutton owned and rented out properties in Edinburgh, employing

3151-526: Is chiefly Hutton's pioneering work that established the field. Hutton was born in Edinburgh on 3 June O.S. 1726, as one of five children of Sarah Balfour and William Hutton, a merchant who was Edinburgh City Treasurer. Hutton's father died in 1729, when he was three. He was educated at the High School of Edinburgh where he was particularly interested in mathematics and chemistry , then when he

3288-424: Is insufficient, the magma chamber within the volcano would crystallise, resulting in the extinction of the volcano and the formation of intrusive igneous rock, also referred to as plutonic rocks or “plutons”. In some instances, a separate chamber may crystallise, hence not resulting in the extinction of the volcano. In the event of uplift/erosion mountain building occurs, batholith rocks occur. Additionally, some of

3425-444: Is presented in historical order according to the date of its earliest ascertainable recorded use. Following each definition are several brief illustrating quotations presented in chronological order from the earliest ascertainable use of the word in that sense to the last ascertainable use for an obsolete sense, to indicate both its life span and the time since its desuetude, or to a relatively recent use for current ones. The format of

3562-486: Is the most-quoted female writer. Collectively, the Bible is the most-quoted work (in many translations); the most-quoted single work is Cursor Mundi . Additional material for a given letter range continued to be gathered after the corresponding fascicle was printed, with a view towards inclusion in a supplement or revised edition. A one-volume supplement of such material was published in 1933, with entries weighted towards

3699-470: The Los Angeles Times . Time dubbed the book "a scholarly Everest ", and Richard Boston , writing for The Guardian , called it "one of the wonders of the world ". The supplements and their integration into the second edition were a great improvement to the OED as a whole, but it was recognized that most of the entries were still fundamentally unaltered from the first edition. Much of

3836-520: The Elements of Agriculture . He distinguished between heritable variation as the result of breeding, and non-heritable variations caused by environmental differences such as soil and climate. Though he saw his "principle of variation" as explaining the development of varieties, Hutton rejected the idea that evolution might originate species as a "romantic fantasy", according to palaeoclimatologist Paul Pearson. Influenced by deism , Hutton thought

3973-510: The Isle of Arran in 1787. The existence of angular unconformities had been noted by Nicolas Steno and by French geologists including Horace-Bénédict de Saussure , who interpreted them in terms of Neptunism as "primary formations". Hutton wanted to examine such formations himself to see "particular marks" of the relationship between the rock layers. On the 1787 trip to the Isle of Arran he found his first example of Hutton's Unconformity to

4110-520: The Nobel Prize in Physics ). Also in 1933 the original fascicles of the entire dictionary were re-issued, bound into 12 volumes, under the title " The Oxford English Dictionary ". This edition of 13 volumes including the supplement was subsequently reprinted in 1961 and 1970. In 1933, Oxford had finally put the dictionary to rest; all work ended, and the quotation slips went into storage. However,

4247-536: The OED ' s entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects. The forerunners to the OED , such as the early volumes of the Deutsches Wörterbuch , had initially provided few quotations from a limited number of sources, whereas the OED editors preferred larger groups of quite short quotations from a wide selection of authors and publications. This influenced later volumes of this and other lexicographical works. According to

Plutonism - Misplaced Pages Continue

4384-565: The OED is neither the world's largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers ' dictionary of the German language , begun in 1838 and completed in 1961. The first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca is the first great dictionary devoted to a modern European language (Italian) and was published in 1612;

4521-659: The OED2 adopted the modern International Phonetic Alphabet . Unlike the earlier edition, all foreign alphabets except Greek were transliterated . Following page 832 of Volume XX Wave -— Zyxt there's a 143-page separately paginated bibliography, a conflation of the OED 1st edition's published with the 1933 Supplement and that in Volume IV of the Supplement published in 1986. The British quiz show Countdown awarded

4658-399: The OED2 is mostly just a reorganization of the earlier corpus, but the retypesetting provided an opportunity for two long-needed format changes. The headword of each entry was no longer capitalized, allowing the user to readily see those words that actually require a capital letter. Murray had devised his own notation for pronunciation, there being no standard available at the time, whereas

4795-640: The OED2, was published. The first edition retronymically became the OED1 . The Oxford English Dictionary 2 was printed in 20 volumes. Up to a very late stage, all the volumes of the first edition were started on letter boundaries. For the second edition, there was no attempt to start them on letter boundaries, and they were made roughly equal in size. The 20 volumes started with A , B.B.C. , Cham , Creel , Dvandva , Follow , Hat , Interval , Look , Moul , Ow , Poise , Quemadero , Rob , Ser , Soot , Su , Thru , Unemancipated , and Wave . The content of

4932-638: The Scottish Highlands , Hutton found granite penetrating metamorphic schists , in a way which indicated that the granite had been molten at the time. This was Hutton's first geological field trip and he was invited by the Duke of Atholl to his hunting lodge, Forest Lodge. The exposures at the Dail-an-eas Bridge demonstrated to him that granite formed from the cooling of molten rock rather than it precipitating out of water as others at

5069-552: The World Wide Web and new computer technology in general meant that the processes of researching the dictionary and of publishing new and revised entries could be vastly improved. New text search databases offered vastly more material for the editors of the dictionary to work with, and with publication on the Web as a possibility, the editors could publish revised entries much more quickly and easily than ever before. A new approach

5206-402: The subduction zone , though this magma fails to reach past the base of the continental crust due to its higher density. However, when heat is applied to the crust, an area of granitic magma can be produced through the melting of the continental crust when contributing to metamorphism. Partial crystallization and magma mixing, among other igneous processes occur once the basaltic magma cools to

5343-576: The 1788 version of his theory (with slight additions) along with a lot of material drawn from shorter papers Hutton already had to hand on various subjects such as the origin of granite. It included a review of alternative theories, such as those of Thomas Burnet and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon . The whole was entitled An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge and of the Progress of Reason, from Sense to Science and Philosophy when

5480-425: The 18th century scientists enquired about the process and context in which the current rock landscape on the Earth's surface came into existence and why it was in the current arrangement. From this enquiry came about two prevailing theories: plutonism, which was proposed by James Hutton , and neptunism , which was proposed by Abraham Gottlob Werner . It has been noted within the scientific community that they were not

5617-421: The 18th century to explain the current arrangement of the landscape and rock formations: plutonism and neptunism. The schism was pseudo-initiated through Moro’s differentiation of sedimentary and volcanic rocks, as well as his theory of volcanic fire lifting the islands and continents, as he argued it was a slow process, whilst others argued it was catastrophic and had no modern equivalences. Neptunists believed that

Plutonism - Misplaced Pages Continue

5754-416: The 1970s, cites Hutton as saying that the Earth was a superorganism and that its proper study should be physiology. Lovelock writes that Hutton's view of the Earth was rejected because of the intense reductionism among 19th-century scientists. Hutton also advocated uniformitarianism for living creatures  – evolution , in a sense  – and even suggested natural selection as

5891-523: The 1998 book The Surgeon of Crowthorne (US title: The Professor and the Madman ), which was the basis for a 2019 film, The Professor and the Madman , starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn . During the 1870s, the Philological Society was concerned with the process of publishing a dictionary with such an immense scope. They had pages printed by publishers, but no publication agreement

6028-513: The Covenanter's Prison. Hutton did not marry and had no legitimate children. Around 1747, he had a son by a Miss Edington, and though he gave his child, James Smeaton Hutton, financial assistance, he had little to do with the boy, who went on to become a post-office clerk in London. Hutton developed several hypotheses to explain the rock formations he saw around him, but according to Playfair he "was in no haste to publish his theory; for he

6165-407: The Earth had formed from a mass of water and suspended material which had formed rocks as layers of deposited sediment which became the continents when the water retreated, further layers being deposited by floods and some volcanic activity. Plutonists strongly disputed the neptunist view that rocks had formed by processes that no longer operated, instead supporting Hutton's theory . A key issue of

6302-526: The Earth's surface initially only contained a turbid ocean, which led to deposits of sediments on the ocean resulting in the formation of crystalline rocks such as granites. There were many opposing views between the two theories, one of the more notable oppositions of each theory was the formation of granite . Hutton believed that the granites were injected within the Glen Tilt of Perthshire as they were intruded through Dalradian metasediments , indicated by

6439-482: The English language continued to change and, by the time 20 years had passed, the dictionary was outdated. There were three possible ways to update it. The cheapest would have been to leave the existing work alone and simply compile a new supplement of perhaps one or two volumes, but then anyone looking for a word or sense and unsure of its age would have to look in three different places. The most convenient choice for

6576-485: The Limits of Time ). Hutton's idea of infinite cycles with humans present throughout is quite different from modern geology, with a definite time of formation and directional change through time, but his supporting evidence for the long-term effects of geological processes was valuable in the development of historical geology. It has been claimed that the prose of Principles of Knowledge was so obscure that it also impeded

6713-524: The Materials Collected by The Philological Society ; the 352-page volume, words from A to Ant , cost 12 s 6 d (equivalent to $ 82 in 2023). The total sales were only 4,000 copies. The OUP saw that it would take too long to complete the work with unrevised editorial arrangements. Accordingly, new assistants were hired and two new demands were made on Murray. The first was that he move from Mill Hill to Oxford to work full-time on

6850-520: The Neptunists, he also accepted the growing consensus on the concept of deep time for scientific purposes. Rather than accepting that the earth was no more than a few thousand years old, he maintained that the Earth must be much older , with a history extending indefinitely into the distant past. His main line of argument was that the tremendous displacements and changes he was seeing did not happen in

6987-524: The OUP forced the promotion of Murray's assistant Henry Bradley (hired by Murray in 1884), who worked independently in the British Museum in London beginning in 1888. In 1896, Bradley moved to Oxford University. Gell continued harassing Murray and Bradley with his business concerns – containing costs and speeding production – to the point where the project's collapse seemed likely. Newspapers reported

SECTION 50

#1732764811683

7124-526: The Stadholder. The Latin manuscript of Hutton's dissertation also contained 92 theses, two of which were successfully defended in public by James Hutton on 3 September 1749. On 12 September 1749, James Hutton obtained his doctorate in medicine from Leiden University with a physico-medical thesis entitled Sanguine et Circulatione Microcosmi. The thesis was printed by Wilhelmus Boot, book printer in Leiden. It

7261-761: The United States, more than 120 typists of the International Computaprint Corporation (now Reed Tech ) started keying in over 350,000,000 characters, their work checked by 55 proof-readers in England. Retyping the text alone was not sufficient; all the information represented by the complex typography of the original dictionary had to be retained, which was done by marking up the content in SGML . A specialized search engine and display software were also needed to access it. Under

7398-593: The University of Edinburgh and communicated his scientific findings through the Royal Society of Edinburgh . He was particularly friendly with physician and chemist Joseph Black , and together with Adam Smith they founded the Oyster Club for weekly meetings. Between 1767 and 1774 Hutton had close involvement with the construction of the Forth and Clyde canal , making full use of his geological knowledge, both as

7535-460: The University of Leiden on 14 August 1749, at the home of the then rector magnificus Joachim Schwartz to obtain a doctorate in medicine. He stayed with the widow Van der Tas (née Judith Bouvat) at the Langebrug, which corresponds to the current address Langebrug 101 in Leiden. His supervisor was Professor Frederik Winter, who was not only a professor at Leiden University, but also court physician to

7672-437: The acceptance of Hutton's geological theories. Restatements of his geological ideas (though not his thoughts on evolution) by John Playfair in 1802 and then Charles Lyell in the 1830s popularised the concept of an infinitely repeating cycle, though Lyell tended to dismiss Hutton's views as giving too much credence to catastrophic changes. It was not merely the earth to which Hutton directed his attention. He had long studied

7809-548: The alphabet as before and updating "key English words from across the alphabet, along with the other words which make up the alphabetical cluster surrounding them". With the relaunch of the OED Online website in December 2010, alphabetical revision was abandoned altogether. The revision is expected roughly to double the dictionary in size. Apart from general updates to include information on new words and other changes in

7946-450: The available data regarding rainfall and climate in different regions of the globe, and came to the conclusion that the rainfall is regulated by the humidity of the air on the one hand, and mixing of different air currents in the higher atmosphere on the other. Hutton taught that biological and geological processes are interlinked. James Lovelock , who developed the Gaia hypothesis in

8083-485: The battle of neptunism and plutonism in a relative stagnation as pro-plutonism and pro-neptunism scientists attempted to ensure their respective theory became accepted. Despite this stalemate, neptunism was partially favoured to plutonism due to Werner’s position allowing him to spread his theory due to a larger degree of individuals within the university and scientific community being influenced by him. Hence, many of his students favoured neptunism over plutonism. Sometime in

8220-456: The belief that this was due to the same geological forces operating in the past as the very slow geological forces seen operating at the present day, the thicknesses of exposed rock layers implied to him enormous stretches of time. Though Hutton circulated privately a printed version of the abstract of his Theory ( Concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration, and Stability ) which he read at

8357-427: The cause of the current landscape, with no modern equivalency. Hutton proposed the Earth was undergoing a slow but continuous changes, where such changes on the Earth namely occur through volcanism , erosion , transportation and deposition of sediments. He used the Glen Tilt of Perthshire as evidence to support his argument, where the used location was used as an example of the neptunist theory prior to his hypothesis of

SECTION 60

#1732764811683

8494-408: The changes of the atmosphere . The same volume in which his Theory of the Earth appeared contained also a Theory of Rain . He contended that the amount of moisture which the air can retain in solution increases with temperature, and, therefore, that on the mixture of two masses of air of different temperatures a portion of the moisture must be condensed and appear in visible form. He investigated

8631-582: The colour syntax-directed editor for the project, LEXX , was written by Mike Cowlishaw of IBM. The University of Waterloo , in Canada, volunteered to design the database. A. Walton Litz , an English professor at Princeton University who served on the Oxford University Press advisory council, was quoted in Time as saying "I've never been associated with a project, I've never even heard of

8768-401: The complete dictionary to 16 volumes, or 17 counting the first supplement. Burchfield emphasized the inclusion of modern-day language and, through the supplement, the dictionary was expanded to include a wealth of new words from the burgeoning fields of science and technology, as well as popular culture and colloquial speech. Burchfield said that he broadened the scope to include developments of

8905-550: The cut across sediment layers. This indicated to Hutton that the sediments were older than the granite. This contradicted Neptunism, as it believes granites to be precipitated out of the ocean, hence being the oldest rock type. In 1773, prior to Hutton’s observations, Abraham Gottlob Werner published his mineralogy book On the External Characteristics of Fossils , which categorised minerals through their physical characteristics alone, which allowed him to obtain

9042-419: The debate revolved around the neptunist belief that basalt was sedimentary, and some fossils had been found in it. Against this, Hutton's supporter John Playfair (1748–1819) argued that this rock contained no fossils as it had formed from molten magma, and it had been found cutting through other rocks in volcanic dykes . The arguments continued into the early 19th century, and eventually the plutonist views on

9179-525: The destruction of bodies, animal, vegetable and mineral, of more ancient formation". His theoretical ideas began to come together in 1760. While his farming activities continued, in 1764 he went on a geological tour of the north of Scotland with George Maxwell-Clerk, ancestor of the famous James Clerk Maxwell . In 1768, Hutton returned to Edinburgh, letting his farms to tenants but continuing to take an interest in farm improvements and research which included experiments carried out at Slighhouses . He developed

9316-548: The dictionary in Chicago, where he was a professor. The fourth editor was Charles Talbut Onions , who compiled the remaining ranges starting in 1914: Su–Sz , Wh–Wo , and X–Z . In 1919–1920, J. R. R. Tolkien was employed by the OED , researching etymologies of the Waggle to Warlock range; later he parodied the principal editors as "The Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford" in the story Farmer Giles of Ham . By early 1894,

9453-459: The dictionary. In 1878, Oxford University Press agreed with Murray to proceed with the massive project; the agreement was formalized the following year. 20 years after its conception, the dictionary project finally had a publisher. It would take another 50 years to complete. Late in his editorship, Murray learned that one especially prolific reader, W. C. Minor , was confined to a mental hospital for (in modern terminology) schizophrenia . Minor

9590-495: The early 19th century, prior to Lyell’s contributions, a French scientist named Georges Cuvier utilised Werner’s neptunism theory within his theory of catastrophism , which had neptunism as a core aspect, similar to how uniformitarianism implemented plutonism as a core aspect. His theory suggested that the Earth’s landscape has come to be through volatile forces that the Earth system possess that come in and out of existence. This theory

9727-403: The east at Siccar Point found what Hutton called "a beautiful picture of this junction washed bare by the sea". Playfair later commented about the experience, "the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time". Continuing along the coast, they made more discoveries including sections of the vertical beds showing strong ripple marks which gave Hutton "great satisfaction" as

9864-453: The end of the schism, and resulting in the general acceptance of plutonism over neptunism. Oxford English Dictionary The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language , published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first edition in 1884, traces

10001-421: The finished dictionary; Bradley died in 1923, having completed E–G , L–M , S–Sh , St , and W–We . By then, two additional editors had been promoted from assistant work to independent work, continuing without much trouble. William Craigie started in 1901 and was responsible for N , Q–R , Si–Sq , U–V , and Wo–Wy. The OUP had previously thought London too far from Oxford but, after 1925, Craigie worked on

10138-673: The first edition of Dictionnaire de l'Académie française dates from 1694. The official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española (produced, edited, and published by the Royal Spanish Academy ), and its first edition was published in 1780. The Kangxi Dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716. The largest dictionary by number of pages is believed to be the Dutch Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal . The dictionary began as

10275-538: The first ones to propose such theories, but they were the ones credited with proposing their corresponding theories to the scientific community. One of the first notable scientists to propose an early theory of plutonism was Abbé Anton Moro , who in the first half of the 18th century was able to inform the scientific community how to differentiate between volcanic and sedimentary rocks. Through observing crustaceans , it led him to discover that within mountains lied petrified fossils. This suggested to him that at one point in

10412-715: The following year under the administrative direction of Timothy J. Benbow, with John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner as co-editors. In 2016, Simpson published his memoir chronicling his years at the OED: The Word Detective: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary – A Memoir (New York: Basic Books). Thus began the New Oxford English Dictionary (NOED) project. In

10549-469: The general public. Wordhunt was a 2005 appeal to the general public for help in providing citations for 50 selected recent words, and produced antedatings for many. The results were reported in a BBC TV series, Balderdash and Piffle . The OED ' s readers contribute quotations: the department currently receives about 200,000 a year. James Hutton James Hutton FRSE ( / ˈ h ʌ t ən / ; 3 June O.S. 1726 – 26 March 1797)

10686-491: The granite present there. He published his theory and findings in an essay in 1788, which was followed by his two-volume work tilted Theory of the Earth in 1795, which expanded upon his 1788 work. In 1802, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory was published by John Playfair, which attempted to siphon the influence of Neptunism at the time. The Illustrations portrayed Hutton's “length and obscurely written book” in

10823-547: The group published the first sample pages; later that month, Coleridge died of tuberculosis , aged 30. Thereupon Furnivall became editor; he was enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but temperamentally ill-suited for the work. Many volunteer readers eventually lost interest in the project, as Furnivall failed to keep them motivated. Furthermore, many of the slips were misplaced. Furnivall believed that, since many printed texts from earlier centuries were not readily available, it would be impossible for volunteers to efficiently locate

10960-529: The harassment, particularly the Saturday Review , and public opinion backed the editors. Gell was fired, and the university reversed his cost policies. If the editors felt that the dictionary would have to grow larger, it would; it was an important work, and worth the time and money to properly finish. Neither Murray nor Bradley lived to see it. Murray died in 1915, having been responsible for words starting with A–D , H–K , O–P , and T , nearly half

11097-415: The historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, and provides ongoing descriptions of English language usage in its variations around the world. In 1857, work first began on the dictionary, though the first edition was not published In until 1884. It began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under

11234-418: The illustrations to the right, layers of greywacke in the lower layers of the cliff face are tilted almost vertically, and above an intervening layer of conglomerate lie horizontal layers of Old Red Sandstone . He later wrote of how he "rejoiced at my good fortune in stumbling upon an object so interesting in the natural history of the earth, and which I had been long looking for in vain." That year, he found

11371-689: The inauguration in June 2005 of the "Perfect All-Singing All-Dancing Editorial and Notation Application ", or "Pasadena". With this XML -based system, lexicographers can spend less effort on presentation issues such as the numbering of definitions. This system has also simplified the use of the quotations database, and enabled staff in New York to work directly on the dictionary in the same way as their Oxford-based counterparts. Other important computer uses include internet searches for evidence of current usage and email submissions of quotations by readers and

11508-422: The information in the dictionary published in 1989 was already decades out of date, though the supplements had made good progress towards incorporating new vocabulary. Yet many definitions contained disproven scientific theories, outdated historical information, and moral values that were no longer widely accepted. Furthermore, the supplements had failed to recognize many words in the existing volumes as obsolete by

11645-526: The intention of producing a third edition from them. The previous supplements appeared in alphabetical instalments, whereas the new series had a full A–Z range of entries within each individual volume, with a complete alphabetical index at the end of all words revised so far, each listed with the volume number which contained the revised entry. However, in the end only three Additions volumes were published this way, two in 1993 and one in 1997, each containing about 3,000 new definitions. The possibilities of

11782-436: The key role in the project's first months, but his appointment as Dean of Westminster meant that he could not give the dictionary project the time that it required. He withdrew and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor. On 12 May 1860, Coleridge's dictionary plan was published and research was started. His house was the first editorial office. He arrayed 100,000 quotation slips in a 54 pigeon-hole grid. In April 1861,

11919-655: The language in English-speaking regions beyond the United Kingdom , including North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and the Caribbean. Burchfield also removed, for unknown reasons, many entries that had been added to the 1933 supplement. In 2012, an analysis by lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie revealed that many of these entries were in fact foreign loanwords, despite Burchfield's claim that he included more such words. The proportion

12056-488: The language, the third edition brings many other improvements, including changes in formatting and stylistic conventions for easier reading and computerized searching, more etymological information, and a general change of focus away from individual words towards more general coverage of the language as a whole. While the original text drew its quotations mainly from literary sources such as novels, plays, and poetry, with additional material from newspapers and academic journals,

12193-419: The leather-bound complete version to the champions of each series between its inception in 1982 and Series 63 in 2010. The prize was axed after Series 83, completed in June 2021, due to being considered out of date. When the print version of the second edition was published in 1989, the response was enthusiastic. Author Anthony Burgess declared it "the greatest publishing event of the century", as quoted by

12330-491: The letter M , with new material appearing every three months on the OED Online website. The editors chose to start the revision project from the middle of the dictionary in order that the overall quality of entries be made more even, since the later entries in the OED1 generally tended to be better than the earlier ones. However, in March 2008, the editors announced that they would alternate each quarter between moving forward in

12467-511: The long geologic time scale . Hutton also put forward a thesis for a 'system of the habitable Earth' proposed as a deistic mechanism designed to keep the world eternally suitable for humans, an early attempt to formulate what today might be called one kind of anthropic principle . Some reflections similar to those of Hutton can be found in publications of his contemporaries, such as the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon , but it

12604-481: The magma within the Earth is produced without subduction, resulting in the formation of “sticky granite magma”, and is without a conduit to reach the surface. Instead, it forces its way through rock crevices, resulting in a high-pressure environment. Cooling then occurs, over a long period of time, resulting in large coarse-grained crystals which form bodies with distinctive textures, resulting in intrusive igneous/plutonic rocks. These rocks vary in size and colour. During

12741-460: The mechanism allowed species to form varieties better adapted to particular conditions and provided evidence of benevolent design in nature. Studies of Charles Darwin 's notebooks have shown that Darwin arrived separately at the idea of natural selection which he set out in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species , but it has been speculated that he had some half-forgotten memory from his time as

12878-453: The name of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society . In 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in 10 bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as 12 volumes with

13015-492: The new edition will reference more kinds of material that were unavailable to the editors of previous editions, such as wills, inventories, account books, diaries, journals, and letters. John Simpson was the first chief editor of the OED3 . He retired in 2013 and was replaced by Michael Proffitt , who is the eighth chief editor of the dictionary. The production of the new edition exploits computer technology, particularly since

13152-457: The north of Newton Point near Lochranza , but the limited view meant that the condition of the underlying strata was not clear enough for him, and he incorrectly thought that the strata were conformable at a depth below the exposed outcrop. Later in 1787 Hutton noted what is now known as the Hutton or "Great" Unconformity at Inchbonny, Jedburgh , in layers of sedimentary rock . As shown in

13289-412: The observed features on the Earth's surface. The theory included aspects of plutonism as core concepts resulting in the de facto general acceptance of plutonism, as uniformitarianism became widely accepted within the scientific community, resulting in Hutton becoming the “Father of Geology”, due to the presence of Hutton's work as core concepts. As mentioned prior, there were two prevailing theories during

13426-501: The origin of rocks prevailed in the wake of the work of Charles Lyell in the 1830s, who incorporated this theory into uniformitarianism . However, geologists regard sedimentary rocks such as limestone as having resulted from processes like those described by the neptunists. Comparatively, plutonism within uniformitarianism is equivalent to neptunism within catastrophism, as both are used as core concepts within their respective theories, and hence similarly, neptunism opposes plutonism in

13563-434: The outer covers of the fascicles; the original title was still the official one and was used everywhere else. The 125th and last fascicle covered words from Wise to the end of W and was published on 19 April 1928, and the full dictionary in bound volumes followed immediately. William Shakespeare is the most-quoted writer in the completed dictionary, with Hamlet his most-quoted work. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

13700-449: The past, through the force of volcanic fire, islands and continents rose from the bottom of the sea. He argued that this occurred over a long period of time as opposed to a relatively short amount of time, indicating some sort of continuous change that has and is occurring on the Earth’s surface, leading to the current formations viewed by humanity. In the 1780s, Hutton started opposing the neptunist view of previous catastrophic events being

13837-406: The position of Curator of Freiburg School of Mining’s mineral collection and teacher of mining, where he was able to promote his theory of neptunism. Through his prestigious position, he attracted many students where he was able to spread neptunism to general scientific community as they entered the field geology and any other connecting fields. As Hutton died in 1797, plutonism was less vocal within

13974-413: The present land was forming at the bottom of the ocean, the former land maintained plants and animals; at least the sea was then inhabited by animals, in a similar manner as it is at present. Hence we are led to conclude, that the greater part of our land, if not the whole had been produced by operations natural to this globe; but that in order to make this land a permanent body, resisting the operations of

14111-416: The production of magma. The process of magma production occurs during the process of mountain formation in which two specific locations where magma would be generated. The first involves high-grade metamorphism occurring within “thickened continental crust ” resulting in granitic magma, hence resulting in a direct formation. The second method involves basaltic magma forming over a larger area, located above

14248-699: The project in ten years. Murray started the project, working in a corrugated iron outbuilding called the " Scriptorium " which was lined with wooden planks, bookshelves, and 1,029 pigeon-holes for the quotation slips. He tracked and regathered Furnivall's collection of quotation slips, which were found to concentrate on rare, interesting words rather than common usages. For instance, there were ten times as many quotations for abusion as for abuse . He appealed, through newspapers distributed to bookshops and libraries, for readers who would report "as many quotations as you can for ordinary words" and for words that were "rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar or used in

14385-472: The project, which he did in 1885. Murray had his Scriptorium re-erected in the back garden of his new property. Murray resisted the second demand: that if he could not meet schedule, he must hire a second, senior editor to work in parallel to him, outside his supervision, on words from elsewhere in the alphabet. Murray did not want to share the work, feeling that he would accelerate his work pace with experience. That turned out not to be so, and Philip Gell of

14522-742: The publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to "key in" the 59 million words of the OED second edition, 60 years to proofread them, and 540 megabytes to store them electronically. As of 30 November 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary contained approximately 301,100 main entries. Supplementing the entry headwords , there are 157,000 bold-type combinations and derivatives; 169,000 italicized-bold phrases and combinations; 616,500 word-forms in total, including 137,000 pronunciations ; 249,300 etymologies ; 577,000 cross-references; and 2,412,400 usage quotations . The dictionary's latest, complete print edition (second edition, 1989)

14659-651: The quotations that the dictionary needed. As a result, he founded the Early English Text Society in 1864 and the Chaucer Society in 1868 to publish old manuscripts. Furnivall's preparatory efforts lasted 21 years and provided numerous texts for the use and enjoyment of the general public, as well as crucial sources for lexicographers, but they did not actually involve compiling a dictionary. Furnivall recruited more than 800 volunteers to read these texts and record quotations. While enthusiastic,

14796-574: The same sequence in Teviotdale . In the Spring of 1788 he set off with John Playfair to the Berwickshire coast and found more examples of this sequence in the valleys of the Tour and Pease Burns near Cockburnspath . They then took a boat trip from Dunglass Burn east along the coast with the geologist Sir James Hall of Dunglass . They found the sequence in the cliff below St. Helens, then just to

14933-414: The same way that catastrophism opposes uniformitarianism. Plutonism is a geological theory proposed by James Hutton, where he proposed that the main cause of the current arrangement of rocks and the Earth's surface landscape was driven through the heat provided by magma concealed within surface of the Earth, which occurred over the course of thousands if not millions of years. This process is influenced by

15070-421: The scientific community at the time as it received scepticism from pro-neptunism individuals. As mentioned above, John Playfair published his Illustrations of Huttonian Theory , which siphoned the influence of neptunism, as Playfair depicted Hutton’s theory in a more concise and clear manner that allowed the presence of plutonism to remain in the opposition of neptunism in the scientific community. Werner’s theory

15207-451: The second by himself on 4 April 1785. Hutton subsequently read an abstract of his dissertation Concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration and Stability to Society meeting on 4 July 1785, which he had printed and circulated privately. In it, he outlined his theory as follows; The solid parts of the present land appear in general, to have been composed of the productions of the sea, and of other materials similar to those now found upon

15344-399: The second supplement; Charles Talbut Onions turned 84 that year but was still able to make some contributions as well. The work on the supplement was expected to take about seven years. It actually took 29 years, by which time the new supplement (OEDS) had grown to four volumes, starting with A , H , O , and Sea . They were published in 1972, 1976, 1982, and 1986 respectively, bringing

15481-423: The shores. Hence we find reason to conclude: 1st, That the land on which we rest is not simple and original, but that it is a composition, and had been formed by the operation of second causes. 2nd, That before the present land was made, there had subsisted a world composed of sea and land, in which were tides and currents, with such operations at the bottom of the sea as now take place. And, Lastly, That while

15618-526: The start of the alphabet where the fascicles were decades old. The supplement included at least one word ( bondmaid ) accidentally omitted when its slips were misplaced; many words and senses newly coined (famously appendicitis , coined in 1886 and missing from the 1885 fascicle, which came to prominence when Edward VII 's 1902 appendicitis postponed his coronation ); and some previously excluded as too obscure (notoriously radium , omitted in 1903, months before its discoverers Pierre and Marie Curie won

15755-449: The sustenance of the animal... the same principle [would] change the qualities of the animal, and.. produce a race of well scented hounds, instead of those who catch their prey by swiftness". The same "principle of variation" would influence "every species of plant, whether growing in a forest or a meadow". He came to his ideas as the result of experiments in plant and animal breeding , some of which he outlined in an unpublished manuscript,

15892-445: The theory that geological features could not be static but underwent continuing transformation over indefinitely long periods of time. From this he argued, in agreement with many other early geologists, that the Earth could not be young. He was one of the earliest proponents of what in the 1830s became known as uniformitarianism , the science which explains features of the Earth's crust as the outcome of continuing natural processes over

16029-428: The third volume was completed in 1794. Its 2,138 pages prompted Playfair to remark that "The great size of the book, and the obscurity which may justly be objected to many parts of it, have probably prevented it from being received as it deserves." His new theories placed him into opposition with the then-popular Neptunist theories of the German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner , that all rocks had precipitated out of

16166-562: The time believed, and therefore the granite must be younger than the schists. Hutton presented his theory of the earth on 4 March and 7 April 1785, at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He went on to find a similar penetration of volcanic rock through sedimentary rock in Edinburgh , at Salisbury Crags , adjoining Arthur's Seat – this area of the Crags is now known as Hutton's Section. He found other examples in Galloway in 1786, and on

16303-510: The time of the second edition's publication, meaning that thousands of words were marked as current despite no recent evidence of their use. Accordingly, it was recognized that work on a third edition would have to begin to rectify these problems. The first attempt to produce a new edition came with the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series, a new set of supplements to complement the OED2 with

16440-422: The user would have been for the entire dictionary to be re-edited and retypeset , with each change included in its proper alphabetical place; but this would have been the most expensive option, with perhaps 15 volumes required to be produced. The OUP chose a middle approach: combining the new material with the existing supplement to form a larger replacement supplement. Robert Burchfield was hired in 1957 to edit

16577-506: The view that "from what has actually been, we have data for concluding with regard to that which is to happen thereafter." This restated the Scottish Enlightenment concept which David Hume had put in 1777 as "all inferences from experience suppose ... that the future will resemble the past", and Charles Lyell memorably rephrased in the 1830s as "the present is the key to the past". Hutton's 1788 paper concludes; "The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of

16714-466: The volunteers were not well trained and often made inconsistent and arbitrary selections. Ultimately, Furnivall handed over nearly two tons of quotation slips and other materials to his successor. In the 1870s, Furnivall unsuccessfully attempted to recruit both Henry Sweet and Henry Nicol to succeed him. He then approached James Murray , who accepted the post of editor. In the late 1870s, Furnivall and Murray met with several publishers about publishing

16851-465: The waters, two things had been required; 1st, The consolidation of masses formed by collections of loose or incoherent materials; 2ndly, The elevation of those consolidated masses from the bottom of the sea, the place where they were collected, to the stations in which they now remain above the level of the ocean. In the summer of 1785 at Glen Tilt and other sites in the Cairngorm mountains in

16988-501: Was 14 he attended the University of Edinburgh as a "student of humanity", studying the classics . He was apprenticed to the lawyer George Chalmers WS when he was 17, but took more interest in chemical experiments than legal work. At the age of 18, he became a physician's assistant, and attended lectures in medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After a two-year stay in Paris, James Hutton arrived in Leiden in 1749, where he enrolled at

17125-500: Was a Scottish geologist , agriculturalist , chemical manufacturer , naturalist and physician . Often referred to as the "Father of Modern Geology," he played a key role in establishing geology as a modern science. Hutton advanced the idea that the physical world's remote history can be inferred from evidence in present-day rocks. Through his study of features in the landscape and coastlines of his native Scottish lowlands , such as Salisbury Crags or Siccar Point , he developed

17262-538: Was a Yale University-trained surgeon and a military officer in the American Civil War who had been confined to Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane after killing a man in London. He invented his own quotation-tracking system, allowing him to submit slips on specific words in response to editors' requests. The story of how Murray and Minor worked together to advance the OED was retold in

17399-466: Was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . From 1791 Hutton suffered extreme pain from stones in the bladder and gave up field work to concentrate on finishing his books. A dangerous and painful operation failed to resolve his illness. He died in Edinburgh and was buried in the vault of Andrew Balfour, opposite the vault of his friend Joseph Black , in the now sealed south-west section of Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh, commonly known as

17536-419: Was called for, and for this reason it was decided to embark on a new, complete revision of the dictionary. Beginning with the launch of the first OED Online site in 2000, the editors of the dictionary began a major revision project to create a completely revised third edition of the dictionary ( OED3 ), expected to be completed in 2037 at a projected cost of about £ 34 million. Revisions were started at

17673-431: Was completed, it was clear that the full text of the dictionary would need to be computerized. Achieving this would require retyping it once, but thereafter it would always be accessible for computer searching—as well as for whatever new editions of the dictionary might be desired, starting with an integration of the supplementary volumes and the main text. Preparation for this process began in 1983, and editorial work started

17810-647: Was developed through his observations of a selected group of rocks, as his position at the university prevented him from make observations and developing his theory on a wider array of rocks. Hence, when other rocks were observed from different parts of the world, conformity to neptunism decreased with each type of rock being examined. This development was noticeable in the work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), who had studied with Werner in Freiberg and gradually departed from his teacher's theories. Due to this trend, neptunism declined after Werner’s death in 1817, leaving

17947-409: Was estimated from a sample calculation to amount to 17% of the foreign loan words and words from regional forms of English. Some of these had only a single recorded usage, but many had multiple recorded citations, and it ran against what was thought to be the established OED editorial practice and a perception that he had opened up the dictionary to "World English". By the time the new supplement

18084-427: Was favoured by the scientific community at the time, and hence, neptunism by default was still maintaining its dominance over plutonism. However, the schism ended through Lyell's book Principles of Geology published in 1830, resulting in the formation of uniformitarianism, which incorporated Hutton's ideas of plutonism. His findings, claims and ideas were accepted by the general scientific community, hence resulting in

18221-448: Was not a list of unregistered words; instead, it was the study On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries , which identified seven distinct shortcomings in contemporary dictionaries: The society ultimately realized that the number of unlisted words would be far more than the number of words in the English dictionaries of the 19th century, and shifted their idea from covering only words that were not already in English dictionaries to

18358-429: Was one of those who are much more delighted with the contemplation of truth, than with the praise of having discovered it". After some 25 years of work, his Theory of the Earth ; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe was read to meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in two parts, the first by his friend Joseph Black on 7 March 1785, and

18495-479: Was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set , which required 60,000 words to describe some 580 senses (430 for the bare verb, the rest in phrasal verbs and idioms). As entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the record was progressively broken by the verbs make in 2000, then put in 2007, then run in 2011 with 645 senses. Despite its considerable size,

18632-601: Was reached; both the Cambridge University Press and the Oxford University Press were approached. The OUP finally agreed in 1879 (after two years of negotiating by Sweet, Furnivall, and Murray) to publish the dictionary and to pay Murray, who was both the editor and the Philological Society president. The dictionary was to be published as interval fascicles, with the final form in four volumes, totalling 6,400 pages. They hoped to finish

18769-488: Was receiving over two million visits per month. The third edition of the dictionary is expected to be available exclusively in electronic form; the CEO of OUP has stated that it is unlikely that it will ever be printed. As a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary features entries in which the earliest ascertainable recorded sense of a word, whether current or obsolete, is presented first, and each additional sense

#682317