James Murray (lexicographer)

Sir James Augustus Henry Murray ( born February 7, 1837 in Denholm, Roxburghshire, Scotland, † July 26, 1915 in Oxford ) was a British lexicographer, philologist and from 1879 until his death in the main editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The son of a village tailor from Hawick was largely self-taught. Like most poor children, he went off with 14 from the school. From 1855 to 1863 he worked as a teacher at Hawick Grammar School, after which he worked as a bank clerk, later as a teacher in London. Besides, he published works such as the Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland (1873 ) and a contribution to the history of English in the Encyclopædia Britannica (1878), who identified him as an outstanding philologists and resulted in him the Philological Society in the following year hired as editor of the large-scale New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. In the same year also Oxford University Press had been obtained as a publisher.

Murray immediately published a call for participation, which was settled by booksellers her books. In this way, thousands of employees have been won, who were looking for citations, among them William C. Minor. 1884 moved Murray to 78 Banbury Road in North Oxford. Its scriptorium of corrugated iron, where he worked most of his work, stood in the garden behind his house. Originally Murray had calculated that he would have to work 33 Tags per day, but sometimes he needed a three- quarters of a day for a single word, as he complained.

Murray planned the whole New English Dictionary and 1913, he succeeded yet to finalize the letter T. The first part appeared in 1884 (letters range from A to ANT) - a total of 352 pages for a price equivalent to about one Euro today. In 1908, he was beaten for his performance knighted. Murray died on July 26, 1915 of pleurisy.

The completion of the dictionary in 125 parts lasted a total of 70 years, giving a planned four times as long as originally. The complete work with 414 825 lemmas was completed in 1928. 1933 already a first supplementary volume was necessary; only since the work as the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) is known.