Since the 1970s, scholars from the University of Toronto (U of T) have been working on constructing an Old English dictionary documenting vocabulary used from the first six centuries.
Angus Cameron, a professor at the U of T, started the project with a group of colleagues. Since Cameron’s death in 1983, the dictionary project has been passed down to those interested in documenting the Old English language, according to the project’s website.
“What they did at the beginning of this project that makes it extraordinary and is still the basis for our work today, is to establish [an online] corpus of Old English,” said Robert Getz, one of the co-editors of the dictionary. “What it consists of is at least one copy of every surviving Old English text.”
Though other Old English dictionaries were published in the 19th century, this Dictionary of Old English (DOE) is more comprehensive and ambitious than other publications, including definitions of words, their various forms and spellings, grammatical functions, and different senses of how the word is used.
Last year, the project reached a milestone, when they published the latest issue of the dictionary containing the entries from A to H.
Continuous funding from donors and grants, along with dedicated staff, has kept this program running for the past 40 years or so, according to the website.
In 2013, the DOE project received a $500,000 five-year grant from the Triangle Community Foundation, paid in five instalments of $100,000 per year, only as long as the DOE team matches that funding, according to its website.
Getz said there is a team of five paid full-time staff working on the DOE, along with a group of U of T graduate students working as research assistants.
“All of us are there at least 40 hours a week, sometimes more,” Getz said. “We also have a number of graduate students who . . . work three [to] five hours every week.”
The latest edition of the dictionary is available for subscribers, but non-subscribers have 20 free accesses every year to the dictionary. University students can access it through institutional subscriptions.
Robin Norris, a Carleton University professor specializing in early English literature, said she uses the DOE in teaching her two courses: Old English and the History of the English Language.
“The DOE is a must for students of Old English, and a powerful resource for anyone who wishes to know more about the earliest form of English,” Norris said.
Kaitlin Griggs, a master of arts student at Carleton taking Norris’ Old English course, said she also uses the DOE for conducting research for projects, and found it useful and user-friendly.
She said the dictionary is a great resource for anyone “interested in linguistics and the history of the English language.”
“Having access to a comprehensive corpus, as well as an easily accessible dictionary, is a wonderful and I feel a critical resource,” Griggs said.
Norris said the DOE is “the best dictionary-in-progress in the world at this time.”
So far, the DOE has nine out of 22 letters completed and more than half the entries written. Getz estimates that it will take another 30 years to finish the rest of the alphabet. He said he hopes when the project is finished, it will be offered to the public for free.
– Photo by Angela Tilley
