“The dictionary of old english”: A progress report

Abstract

About one hundred years ago Joseph Bosworth, Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford, started work on a dictionary of Old English, but only his entries for A through F were printed before his death. T. Northcote Toller, then Smith Professor of English in Owens College, Manchester, continued work on the dictionary using Bosworth's papers. The complete project, entitled An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, was published by Oxford University Press in 1898 and has been reprinted several times since then. Toller continued to work with the material and his Supplement, which is over half as long as the original, was published by the same press in 1921. It too has been reprinted several times. Professor Alistair Campbell of the University of Oxford is now finishing a second supplement to cover omissions in the work of Bosworth and Toller. Replacement of the Bosworth-Toller dictionary is necessary because of the great advances made in the study of Old English and in lexicography over the century since Bosworth began his work. The compilation of a new dictionary afresh from the texts has been discussed for years, but the possibility only became a plan of action in December 1968 at a special meeting of the Old English Group of the Modern Language Association. There agreement was reached to call a conference to explore further both the question and the ways in which computer technology could aid and affect the preparation of such a dictionary. The conference was held on 21 and 22 March 1969 at the University of Toronto, with the Centre for Medieval Studies as the convening host, and was attended by about fifty scholars from Canada, England, and the United States. Money for this conference was provided by the Canada Council, the Foundation for Education and Social Development of Boston, and the University of Toronto. The proceedings of this conference were published in 1970 with the title Computers and Old English Concordances2 One reader of this volume has described it as a who-dunnit in which the crime is announced