The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary

November 1, 2024 - The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary is a 2006 book by three editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall and Edmund Weiner. It examines J. R. R. Tolkien's brief period working as a lexicographer with the OED after World War I, traces his ...

October 7, 2025 - Tolkienian, a. Of or pertaining ... (OED), or New English Dictionary as it was called at its initiation, is the standard English dictionary....

October 11, 2021 - For all of the dis­cus­sion of Tolkien’s ency­clo­pe­dic tech­nique, no one seemed to note at the time that the author had, in fact, invent­ed for him­self (with apolo­gies to James Joyce) a new genre and way of writ­ing, a kind of ety­mo­log­i­cal fan­ta­sy, a kind of writ­ing he learned while work­ing on the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, that august cat­a­logue of the Eng­lish lan­guage which first appeared in full in 1928 — in ten vol­umes after fifty years of work.

November 3, 2018 - It means it provided the etymology for the word. English is weird and has words from languages all over the world. The oxford dictionary took decades to finish. Tolkien worked on the project starting in 1918.

Many thanks are due to the staff of the Dictionary of Old English for hosting me · during my research trip (funded by a travel scholarship from the University of Glasgow) and for answering · my many questions. Most of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Peter Gilliver for the initial email · exchange that inspired me to write this article, and for the comments, corrections and patience that ... The significance of J.R.R. Tolkien’s time spent working on the Oxford English

Tolkien's first job, on returning home from World War I, was as an assistant on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary.

August 14, 2012 - Many of the OED blog posts have been moved to our Discoverability hubs. In these hubs, you will find overviews on the history of English, commentaries on the etymology and semantic development of words, World Englishes resources, and a series of word lists on a wide range of topics.

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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1882-1973) an English writer, best known as the author of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-5). Tolkien was also a professor at Oxford University. ... Look up any word in the dictionary offline, anytime, anywhere with the Oxford Advanced Learner’s ...

November 14, 2009 - Throughout, the authors provide thoughtful examples not only of diligent word-histories but of word-play; and references not only to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but to other Tolkien work such as Farmer Giles of Ham and his editions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. There are parallels and contrasts from Beowulf and William Shakespeare and William Morris up through W. H. Auden and C. S. Lewis. And plenty of references from the Oxford English Dictionary.

An alphabetical pot-pourri follows: discussions of specific words that Tolkien revived (such as oliphaunt or mathom), used distinctively (elf, lockholes), coined from English matter (staggerment, smial), or wrongly thought he had coined (hobbit and, as it now emerges, orc); among many insights it is a pleasure to realise that the names of the two hobbits who find the Ring, Déagol and the Cain-like Sméagol, mean respectively ‘secretive’ and ‘inquisitive’. The book is rounded off with a brief, provisional comment on Tolkien’s on-going impact on the language. The authors have filleted their subject of some less digestible portions, a decision which might be welcomed by those who shiver at the thought of multi-volume dictionaries or fantasies, but which seems a trifle unfortunate in a book that deals with both.

Tolkien's first job, on returning home from World War I, was as an assistant on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary. He later said that he had "learned more in those two years than in any other equal part of his life." The Ring of Words reveals how his professional work on the OED influenced Tolkien's creative use of language in his fictional world.

A discussion with the authors of 'The Ring of Words', an exploration into Tolkien's work as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary.

Paul Nolan Hyde, J.R.R. Tolkien: Creative Uses of the Oxford English Dictionary, Mythlore, Vol. 14, No. 1 (51) (Autumn 1987), pp. 20-24, 56

July 8, 2024 - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is the grandfather of modern fantasy; his books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings formed the foundation of the genre. But before the renowned writer and philologist crafted the world of Middle-earth, he spent some ...

Considers how important word choice was to Tolkien in his fiction, no doubt a result of his philological training and work on the OED. Tolkien frequently chose historical rather than modern versions of words, causing great confusion to editors and proofreaders.

alphabetical sequence, as it does in Oxford Dictionaries · today, and have therefore described it in alphabetical order · by headword, except where there is good reason to do ... 4 Tolkien’s contribution was the preparation of a glossary, which appeared separately as A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) — his first

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A description of J.R.R. Tolkien’s time working on the Oxford English Dictionary together with a detailed analysis of the evidence for his contribution to the entries for individual words.