Review
What [John Willinsky] found--after years of old-fashioned study bolstered by a sophisticated computer analysis of the entire OED text--is fascinating and disconcerting. . . . [While he] never undermines or obscures the amazing enterprise that is the OED . . . [he] documents the human foibles undergirding the selection of [its] famous illustrative quotations.
Product Description
Challenging the authority of the "Oxford English Dictionary", this study reveals many of the dictionary's inherent prejudices and questions the assumptions behind its continuous revision. It describes how judgemental the task of editing a major dictionary can be.