Peter Gilliver

The gallows in question being where, according to the author, four Catholics were martyred in 1589, and possibly (if it was the same gallows) a fifth in 1610.

Well now, this I didn’t know. (Laurence Bévenot, ‘A Memorial of Oxford Martyrs’ (Ampleforth Journal Summer 1924))

I think he was probably quite a trying person; but then he was also sorely tried.

The extraordinary Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857–1922) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/the-quotatio...

James Creed Gilbert (1858–1938) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

In tribute to the genius of the late, great Tom Lehrer: here are the two #OED entries which quote from his brilliant, evergreen songs.

…the important early Middle English text that Burchfield had taken as the subject of his postgraduate research. But, well, I thought the connection worth a mention.

…draw on Dawson’s experience of the OED, unless you count minor details like the narrator’s referring to having ‘once nearly bec[o]me a philological researcher’, or to having ‘become interested in the Ormulum’—this being…

…written any Dictionary entries, since the work being done at this stage consisted almost exclusively of collecting quotation evidence; in fact she continued to contribute to the project in this way on a freelance basis, by reading texts, for several years. The Ha-Ha doesn’t…

…the first person taken onto his staff by Robert Burchfield, in autumn 1957, just weeks after he started work as editor of the revised Supplement. She left just under a year later, and is therefore unlikely to have…

Jennifer Dawson’s lost chronicle of a crack-up The Ha-Ha, a newly reissued 1961 novel about a young woman’s time in a mental hospital, is startlingly contemporary

Interested to see this article in the Observer about Jennifer Dawson, whose award-winning debut novel The Ha-Ha (1961) has just been reissued:
observer.co.uk/culture/book...
No mention of her connection to the OED: she was…

Christopher Orlando Sylvester Mawson (1870–1938) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

James Platt junior (1861–1910) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

A #hivemind question for anyone who knows about the @uniofeastanglia: does the university still have a James Platt Centre for Language Learning? And if not, what happened to it?

Dinosaurs are so coole and thei do not even have to trye that ys just how thei are

And here's a non-paywalled version of the SMH story: archive.is/202507112214...

Who will tell the histories of our shared pasts?

We invite everyone to read our statement of concern on the planned downsizing of academic positions in the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences and the closure of The Australian National Dictionary via buff.ly/A5sAcbC

📷 Wikimedia Commons

Australian National Dictionary Centre could be shut down Follow the latest news headlines from Australia's most trusted source. Read in-depth expert analysis and watch live coverage on ABC News.

I think the Sydney Morning Herald link may be paywalled; here's an unpaywalled version of the story. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07...

Anyone who cares about the history of language, or who thinks language is an important part of a nation's culture, will be appalled at this news. I don't know how irrevocable the decision is; if you know of anyone who could join the call to keep the centre open, please let them know. /…

Delighted to be of help. I have posted about the new venture in other places—all power to your elbow.

How very exciting. I particularly look forward to hearing some Frederick Tolkien, about whom I wrote on John Garth's website some years ago: johngarth.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/t...
—intriguing to think that JRRT might even have heard his cousin's three-act opera "Lola Descartes" in Leeds in 1922!

I remember the first time I went to Finland being struck by how there was the same view everywhere—lake, thin line of trees, sky—and how beautiful it was.

If only I could ‘write, oh crumbs, like the Kipling and the Dickens’.
(Cincinnati Commercial Tribune 29 Dec 1902)

I hear ya. In fact it predates Pratchett: my late mother often referred to something having a high embuggerance factor. An expression which may have military origins, and goes back at least to 1969 (this from the Daily Mirror). #ongoingresearch

No, no relation.

...ministered at Brighouse's Bridge End Congregational Chapel for 14 years, but returned there regularly through the 1880s/90s to preach and give lectures (often on temperance). Suggestive, certainly. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...

Embarrassingly, I now discover that I came up with a possible explanation for the Brighouse connection myself when I last puzzled over it 4 years ago: the strong Brighouse links of James Murray's friend Robert Harley. Who not only...

Eleanor Lloyd (1843–1919) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about her. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/the-quotatio...

John Samuel Jowett (1843–1930) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

Update: this must be the sense recorded in DARE as synonymous with 'floating islands' (but there only recorded from 1878).