Peter Gilliver

#OnThisDay in 1986, my partner Robin and I decided that the thing we had—having met in January—was a Very Good Thing. And, 40 years later, the Very Good Thing is still going. Please be happy with us.

One in five Reform members want non-white Britons removed from UK, poll finds Reform members are generally ‘more pessimistic, angry and extreme than the British public’, according to the study’s author

One in five Reform members want non-white British citizens to be removed from UK, poll finds

Daniel Silvan Evans (1818–1903) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

Voices from a Future Passed - on sale from 1st March The official Acorn biography, Voices from a Future Passed, put together by Rob Napier, will be available to buy from 1st March. Voices from a Future Pas

For those interested in the history of personal computing: www.riscository.com/2026/voices-...

Jonathan Eastwood (1823–64) 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...

Oh, and fun extra fact: Ernest Weekley was a schoolfriend of James Platt junior, the extraordinarily multilingual OED1 consultant. See themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

Ernest Weekley (1865–1954) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

*Lorenz

orenz Morsbach (1850–1945) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

Ah yes, that "really really long poem about everything" (David Bowie).

Thanks - I'll see what I can do.

I should mention that I've just reorganized my website so that the articles are ordered chronologically, which I think makes for a more interesting read. For those (and I hope there are many) who are keen enough to read more than one article.

Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838–1926) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

Wonderful. An attempt which succeeds admirably. Ah, but WHICH dictionary?

Delighted to find that my piece about James Platt has now been cited in S. Laker, ‘James Platt junior's contributions to Old English Grammar’, in the latest issue of Trans. Philol. Soc. (doi: 10.1111/1467-968x.70022)—first time this website has been cited in an academic paper!

George Washington Salisbury Friedrichsen (né Cohen) (1886–1979) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/the-editors-...

No Battenberg for my colleagues, but I did buy some angel cake, which has similarities, and which I prefer.

I just wished my colleagues ‘Happy First Fascicle Day’ (and urged them to eat a selection of cake et al.)—for #OnThisDay in 1884 the first fascicle of the #OED was published. Do please concelebrate in your own way.

William Moore (1838/9–1907) 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...

Henry Fillmer Rutter (1860–1936) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

Alexander Kemlo (1839–1913) 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...

Charles George Crump (1862–1935) is my latest #OEDMaker, and here’s a piece about him. Also available on Facebook to @DictionarySocNA members and at themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/the-editors-...

Thanks @simonkoppel.bsky.social. Interesting. It does indeed seem to be a bogus document; at least, it used to say so on this (now archived-only) page on the All Souls website. So that quotation needs redating. Leave it with me.... #ongoingresearch
web.archive.org/web/20070605...

…None of these later details are relevant to the history of the OED, but at least they show that there was more to Leonard Mayall than cotton.
For a more durable version of this article see themakersoftheoed.wordpress.com/miscellaneou...

…kept in touch with former choristers all over the world, attending their annual dinner in the Palace. Such was his devotion to the institution and its singers that in his will he left nearly two-fifths of his substantial estate (he never married) to be shared out among a group of the choristers. …

…a rather unexpected reason: on a visit to Hampton Court Palace he attended a service in the Chapel Royal, and fell in love with the sound of the choir. He became a regular at the chapel’s services, and became friendly with the choristers; he even established an old choristers’ association, and…

…no other evidence that Mayall contributed to the Dictionary, and he did indeed go into the family business, becoming a director of John Mayall Limited. He subsequently moved away from Mossley, and eventually took up residence in Hampton Wick, on the outskirts of London, for…

…the splendid Murray Scriptorium project, and can be read in full here: www.murrayscriptorium.org/correspondent/may01
Leonard Mayall’s list of Lancashire terms doesn’t survive, but it seems likely that James Murray must have made some use of it, given that he preserved Mayall’s letter. There is…

…his former schoolmaster enclosing his ‘list of Lancashire words and expressions’ (noting that they were ‘all in common use about here, among the lower classes’). The letter—in which young Mayall ‘hope[s] the Dictionary is progressing’—has been transcribed as part of…

…After leaving school, he went to work for a Lancashire manufacturer of textile machinery—I would guess that this was in preparation for entering the family business—and he took notes of the terms of Lancashire dialect that he heard his workmates using. And in July 1882 he wrote to…