Back so i think theres a general consensus now this conflict is generational, its a different kind of conflict its not one where you can say you can walk away fromthis because we want. The enemy, this enemy has decided to keep fighting. You can watch this and other programsonline at booktv. Org. [inaudible conversation] hello everyone. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. Im part of the event staff here and on behalf of the staff and our owners we are honored to welcome you to host john simpson for his book the word detectives. Searching for it all at the meeting of the oxford dictionary and a few housekeeping notes for us to get started. Take out the cell phones and noisemaking devices and silence those at this time so we dont have any unnecessary interruption, that would be great. We will also mention that we are on book tv is here today and they will be filming the event and we are doing our own reporting as well so john is going to come us about a half hour we will have another half hour for questions and answers and we havent microphone here, please make your way there when you have a question so that you can see yourself on tv and the famous. But really thats the only housekeeping notice. After the event is over, if you will help us. We put the bookstore back together so if you will take your chair and folded up and lean it against something started. Also, the books are available to purchase at the cash register. If you havent already done so and after the signing will immediately follow right here. So can you drink a glass of balderdash, what you call that plastic cant scratch and if serendipitously you find yourself in serendipity, where are you . The answers to all of these questions integrate many more are found in the pages of the Oxford English dictionary, the definitive record of the englishlanguage and theres no better guy for the dictionaries many wonderment than the former editor of the oed , john simpson and the word detective is a memoir and joyful celebration of english. It weaves a story of how words come into being and sometimes how culture shapes the language used and how technology has informed not only the way we speak and write but how words are made. Kirkus reviews says its a witty memoir from a editor which insists he is not a quote, word lover. A captivating celebration of the life among words. John simpson is the chief editor of the Oxford English dictionary for three years until 2016 and during his tenure he managed the digitization of the dictionary and initiated its third edition schedule in 2037. Overseeing some 70 editors at the time. John is an american fellow of the college and writes research on lexicon, literary and historical issues. He now edits the james joyce online notes and has three word projects in shelton made. Join me in welcoming john simpson. [applause] good evening. I never had this many enrollment one time but im used to being on the streets of london. Im just on my own so what ive done is ive taken this, hes called hugo, hes not my publisher. Hes a sort of amalgam of what this use to be like in the old days. Hes calledhugo. Welcome to everyone. Welcome to everyone. Im absolutely delighted that so many people have come along tonight to celebrate the publication of johns book, much of which i have already read on the train. Ive asked john a few questions about the words and i hope those of you who have not yet read it to the end will get an impression of why i am told we are so keen to publish it. John, you spent many years working on the Oxford English dictionary. Why did you write this memoir and how does it ever from other accounts of the oed . And he hands it over to me. I read the word detective because ive read so many books about the history of the oed, the problems between the editors and the publishing staff, all the difficulties of the 19th century, getting these together, its a massive book, massive project. Though actually that misses the fun of writing, documenting the history of words which is what it is all about. What i all i was trying to do was infuse people to enjoy writing about the history and researching the history of their language. People ask how i came to write the book and is pretty straightforward. About six months before i left the University Press in oxford in 2013, for some reason the press department put out a press release to say i was leaving. Secretly, i think they were just very pleased area but anyway, i dont know why they did this but they put out a press release and media got a hold of it and they ran stories like the o. E. D. Chief word detective leaves after 36 years sothats where i got the idea of the word detective from. And then i did use Time Magazine as an interview for me and that was an instrumental interview. It was a question and answer and it made me sound interesting. So many journalists coming to the o. E. D. And they come alongwith preconceptions of us in long white beard , rural males and we spend our time staring at our desks writing out little index card with definitions on them and theres so much thats not true but its a stereotype of lexicography which i was trying to avoidby writing the book. And as a result of that, a few days later i got a phone call from david to their new York Literary agent same i thought you were quite interesting as you came over in the Time Magazine piece. You think of any point in thinking ofwriting a book about your experiences . And maybe we can take it around and publish it and see what they think. I said im far too busy at the moment. I got very important work, i cant do that unless talk about it when i finish so six months later i was finally out the door and i thought well, lets give it a try, lets see if we can make dictionary work sound fun to people. The stereotypes of something that have dogged me throughout my 37 years on the o. E. D. And in the introduction to the book, i wrote a little piece about the sort of stereotyping that we get in books and films. I was talking about the excitement of writing dictionaries. This is a specific kind of excitement. Its different from the dramatic excitement portrayed in all the fire, my favorite film about reference works. I try to play in a peoples comedy to groups of summer schoolers i thought years ago. I expect they thought it was the best part of the course. In the film, the erudite looking gary cooper is a grammarian. Im sure you can remember the film and he and his editors were engaged in the noble task of writing an encyclopedia. The professors led quiet lives quite unfit to the vibrant work of dictionary editing. In particular, they are unfamiliar with the vocabulary of the dive book in the hubcaps as would have it, gary cooper stumbled across Barbara Stanwyck disguised as a nightclub singer sugarbush oshea and he and his fellow editors rather take a shine to her. They sneak out at night to listen to her vocabulary at the nightclub. Gary cooper goes and add slang to the encyclopedia and sugarbush is eventually rescued from numerous potential mishaps by the kindly hearted editors. These are not exactly how things worked on the o. E. D. We never knowingly employed anyone named sugarbush. So its sort of a stereotype but it does indicate what i felt in the work when i was working there and so in the book there are sort of four main aspects that i wanted to draw into. The reason i wanted to write the book was a book of the questions about words. The interesting things i found out about words and how i approach them and dictionary writers always have to come up with words on the side. Never confront them head on because you dont find anything if you confront them head on. You look at the strange aspects, youre looking at how people use words in the park. Youre trying to push you read a sentence from the 17th century text, you are trying to push it out of shape so that it helps you to understand the definition of the actual word you are working on and its a strange way of looking at things but i always like to look at things sideways rather than front on. I wanted to talk about the language, how exchanged over the time i was at the dictionary. The book more or less starts when i apply for the job and i finish it today so theres no early life while i was at school, i had a lovely time, whatever. Nothing like that. Unfortunately, maybe that will be in volume 2, the people but it starts with applying for a job and finding the job in the dictionary. Theres a bit about my life, my friends in the dictionary, friends outsidethe dictionary, my family. I interweave that with a think about 60 boxes about words where i take a word like paraphernalia or 101 as a kind of class you ticket college and track the history of that overtime as far as the o. E. D. Is able to demonstrate it. Because any word in the language is interesting if you do a little bit of research about it and write it up. But i talk about the language generating at the time outside the dictionary, how we wrote the dictionary in book form, the dictionary on computer which is what it is now and how we were opening up access to the people to read the dictionary by putting it online over a long period. John, that is a very huge book. Thats a very convincing answer. I read the odd stances on the train up here and i was impressed at the style and you talked about how you confronted writing as a formal and revered document as the Oxford English dictionary. Perhaps you would like to read a short section to give us a flavor of the book. When i first went into the o. E. D. I hadnt been at oxford before. Ive been at your studying english and it was quite a forbidding place. And i think at the time oxford scholarships was something that was held in all and it was quite difficult for people, especially new editors to unravel that, to see through what was actually there, what we were trying to do which was really to explain the meaning and history of words. Part of the first years i was there was really getting myself into what the dictionary was trying to do and sort of becoming less in all when i went through this procedure. To give you some idea of what it was like as a new editor, i thought id read a bit from the book about my first interview at the University Press. Ive been living in redding about 15 miles away and i had an na there and i didnt think it was going to fit me for too much in the world and then yes, it was great. Because we always find that people with a media full background actually are wellsuited to looking at words but back in the medieval period into the old english. And up to the present day, if you were going to have a history of anything about language in the 19th century, you find it with issues to deal with 15th, 17th Century Media full recovery so you did in the end turn out to be useful to have that sort of background. Ive been called in the interview and the University Press porter let me into the grand quadrangle or court. Before i had a chance to read the sumptuous law i was directed off to one side. He didnt get to experience the full splendor of the place unless you deserved it and i found the Personnel Department and my correspondent occurred. The colonel was the human face of the department of the o. E. D. In those days. It was a delightful military chap, retired of course and coming of the left over from the days when old soldiers rolled personnel. He was more closely a characteractor , colonel pickering of my fair lady. White shorts, chatty and a military antenna. We shook hands and then he sank into his seat behind the substantial desk where i was directed to an easy chair designed principally to make you feel you werent the most important person in the room. We talked about the magnificent history of the University Press through the eyes of the Personnel Department and we wonder jointly how easy i might find it from writing to oxford, fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity. The distance between the two places at 25 miles away discovered much later that there were people in oxford just a few hundred feet outside the old city walls. The sun rises over worcester, Worcester College that is, it wouldnt be much point in referring to the cyclicals here but i went on my interview with him and then at the Dictionary Department i meet with a few credits here and ill leave you where i got the joke off. But im trying not to write a sort of book where you go from footnote to footnote discussing the particular policies and all that sort of thing and i was really just trying to write an approachable, i reasonably entertaining book about my time at the o. E. D. And we will get to the words in a few minutes. John, its me. Its not somebody else. Thats a very convincing argument. Its great when you are in charge of your script. I told all my editors that the word detective, the text of educational snippets of english, this is true. Yes, ive already explained that what i wanted to do was to take words. There are so many books about language that sort of take the wellknown examples of words and take you through them. If you read any history of english, you will find descriptions of the words in all the other histories of english and when what i wanted to do was wheni had written something , a paragraph that i thought was of interest i would check in the o. E. D. , think what the story was and write it out from my perspective. But with the facts that are in the o. E. D. So on the one hand i was showing you the detail the o. E. D. Holds but also trying to approach it in a way that was readable because its quite a difficult dictionary to read sometimes. If you are not familiar with it. And for my example of one of the books that transpired, i dont know if youre familiar with the origin of the meeting transpire but its one of those word boxes that describe individual words so if you will go with me on this, we will see what happens in transpire. Ive got, i dont know, on the box and box, all sorts of things that are quite fun. And in the midtolate 18th century the verb transpire cause no end of arguments to otherwise healthy individuals. There were people who think the word should mean what use to me. Any deviation from this is heresy. The nice is somehow still related in its origin to the nesting of ignorance or that logic is any argument of a word from the freq photos, a word. Transpire at least a cruise has a literal meaning in classical latin but over the centuries, English Speakers have used the technical word and mangled this. The word transpire is known in english from the latter end of the 16th century and it drives from latin trans there are a, trans as an across and spit robbery as in to be, spiritist, etc. Its expected to mean the transmission by breathing. Heres how the o. E. D. Views that old meeting. They were first asked in a state of paper through the walls or surface of the body, especially they get off or discard waste matter from the body was been. So thats the old meaning of the word. What we nowadays think of as transpire, as we move through the 17th century, the range of context in which the term could be employed rose at the core meaning remains constant , desperation comes into it frequently, liquid passing from inside to outside. Itturned out to be a useful word in the emerging sciences , almost heading for stardom. Most hiccup on the road to immortality occurred in 1748, lord chesterfield who has a style leader later annoyed by the strong support fromhis proposed dictionary with noble lord realized it was very off plan. The language changes and wasnt necessarily aging nearer to perfection and the dictionary should be over this. In 1748, the lord chesterfield ironically and despite his general calls on language change is guided to use the word transpire in a figurative way. The french trans. , when writing his correspondence. This is what he wrote. That confidence which i placed in you, that you will therefore not let one word of it transpire. Theres nothing wrong with that should you be the person who finds things wrong with language and the french had developed at this early in the 18th century. What lord chesterfield was saying is that it is not one word, one word in the contents of linear from this current, secret private state through the public view. The development from the philippine transportation is easy and unexceptional. The way he came to address the word in his dictionary rather pompously found even this minor semantic shift too much. Lately innovated from france without necessity. What happened next set language theorists into a decline. According to the o. E. D. , it was an american lady, abigail adams, wife of the second president of theUnited States was writing in 1775 to her husband at the continental congress. There is nothing new transpiring since i wrote you last area and im sure others missed it before she did but at the moment she has all the credit. They hated this new meaning to occur, to happen. One known pure permutation or any permutation and transmigration of the loosest variety and a sense of something moving from one state, nothing happening, to another state, something happening. Organic change like this shouldnt happen in a polite 18th century salon. The fact that it might well be americans and americans are not really on anyones dance card in 1775. Somebody made the language even less popular in britain that might have been. The First Edition of the o. E. D. In the early, latter 20th century despair. It is a misuse. The dictionary offers some assistance. Evidence arising from misunderstanding must have transpired during his absence, he did not know. We should say this a rather enigmatic way of describing something. In the seven years, he has following in the footsteps of others such as the american was to wrote in1850, this novel use of the word is common in the United States , nor does it appear to be uncommon in england though it has been repeatedly censured by judicious credits here and there as improper. It doesnt work too much, it transpires. Sorry, i have to transpire freely. The one question im always asked and have been asked every day since 1976 is how does a new word get into the dictionary . And in the old days, before the internet, we had a short answer and we said to people if we have in our card files private examples or five examples of a sense of the word spanning a five year time span then we consider putting it into the dictionary and then the internet came in because you could get 10,000 examples of misspellings you can use that as an example. I wouldnt mind putting this many in dictionary because we are not trying to prescribe people should use the language, w