Pronunciation in the OED

Abstract

Abstract The decision to include pronunciation in the dictionary came about almost by accident. Richard Chenevix Trench, in his paper to the Philological Society in 1857, ‘Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries’, had not even broached the question (Trench 1860: 5); nor had the official Proposal for the Publication of a New English Dictionary by the Philological Society of 1859. The first formal mention of it—perhaps as an afterthought—was in the Canones Lexicographici of 1860, the set of instructions drawn up by the Society to inform members about the proposed contents of the dictionary. Readers were given guidance on how words were to be ‘collected’, and were told that ‘the Pronunciation and Accent shall be marked; and any changes which the former have undergone shall be briefly pointed out’ ( [Trench et al.] 1860: 5). Shortly afterwards, Derwent Coleridge (uncle of the dictionary’s first editor, Herbert Coleridge) spoke on the question of pronunciation, in a paper read to the Society in 1860. He expressed the view that there would be ‘some difficulties’ in tackling the orthoepical part of the dictionary, but that ‘the standard of pronunciation should be fixed by a comparison with some foreign standard or standards’ and that ‘varying pronunciations should be given, and where the preference is not decided by custom, then, and then only, it may be given in favour of the spelling or etymology’ (Coleridge 1860: 166-7, fn. 1).