Search Term: Skeat

Walter W. Skeat and the Oxford English Dictionary

By Anatoly Liberman

For many years, I have been trying to talk an old friend of mine into writing a popular book on Skeat. A book about such a colorful individual, I kept repeating, would sell like hotcakes. But he never wrote it. Neither will I (much to my regret), but there is no reason why I should not devote another short essay to Skeat. In 2016, Oxford University Press published Peter Gilliver’s book The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, a work of incredible erudition.

Casting a last spell: After Skeat and Bradley

By Anatoly Liberman
I think some sort of closure is needed after we have heard the arguments for and against spelling reform by two outstanding scholars. Should we do something about English spelling, and, if the answer is yes, what should we do? Conversely, if no, why no? 

Walter W. Skeat (1835-1912) and spelling reform

By Anatoly Liberman
Henry Bradley, while writing his paper (see the previous post), must have looked upon Skeat as his main opponent. This becomes immediately clear from the details. For instance, Skeat lamented the use of the letter c in scissors and Bradley defended it.

Professor Wright and Professor Skeat

By Anatoly Liberman
From time to time I mention the unsung heroes of English etymology, but only once have I devoted a post to such a hero (Frank Chance), though I regularly sing praises to Charles P.G. Scott, the etymologist for The Century Dictionary. Today I would like to speak about Joseph Wright (1855-1930). He was not an etymologist in the strict sense of this term, but no article on the origin of English words can do without consulting The English Dialect Dictionary he edited.

Walter W. Skeat Faces the World

By Anatoly Liberman
Last week I wrote that one day I would reproduce some memorable statements from Skeat’s letters to the editors. This day has arrived. I have several cartons full of paper clippings, the fruit of the loom that has been whirring incessantly for more than twenty years: hundreds of short and long articles about lexicographers, with Skeat occupying a place of honor. A self-educated man in everything that concerned the history of Germanic, he became the greatest expert in Old and Middle English and an incomparable etymologist. In England, only Murray, the editor of the OED, and Henry Sweet were his equals, and in Germany, only Eduard Sievers. Joseph Wright, another autodidact

Reforming English spelling

By Anatoly Liberman

After the Spelling Society’s London congress, Anatoly Liberman makes the case for reforming English spelling slowly: drop needless letters in words like acquire, communal, and sufficient, offend no one, and let popular culture help.

A scramble for information, or dangerous shr-schr words

By Anatoly Liberman

Words beginning with shr- ~ schr- ~scr- have bothered me for years, partly because of German Schreck “horror.”

Gloves, gauntlets, and gaunt people

By Anatoly Liberman

Last week, I finished my story with a brief reference to all kinds of gloves. A few days later, a query came about the word gauntlet.

Boots (or rather, shoes) on the ground

By Anatoly Liberman

Few words are harder to trace to their sources than the names of clothing articles. Those names travel with the things to which they belong, and the sources are easily lost sight of.

Tarry or hurry?

By Anatoly Liberman

It is surprising how similar the verbs in the title sound, though they are antonyms: tarry means “to linger, delay,” while hurry refers to haste.

A few etymological pebbles

By Anatoly Liberman

The readers of this blog must have noticed how often I suggest solutions connected with sound imitation. Time and again I say that a certain noun or verb owes its origin to onomatopoeia.

The level of our expertise: the perplexing verb baffle

By Anatoly Liberman

What does it mean when a dictionary says: “Origin unknown”? We will soon see that the concept of “unknown” has several levels.

Seeing red

By Anatoly Liberman

The history of color names presents countless problems, and the literature on the subject is enormous. Today’s post is only about some curious uses of the word red in English.

Aftermath and its kin

By Anatoly Liberman

My story today is about several words referring to aftermath. All of them have a rather confusing sound shape.

In and out of the box

By Anatoly Liberman

Today’s story is about boxing (that is, about the word box).

Much hubbub about very little

By Anatoly Liberman

Soon after the blog Oxford Etymologist came into existence on March 5, 2006 (more than twenty years ago!), I wrote a post on the word hubba-hubba.