The Birds of the Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary is actually a historical record of events. It is a recording, or a collection, of the times that words were used in history, and what those words were then made to mean.

I bet the process of creating the Oxford English Dictionary was like assembling the animals for Noah’s Ark. I bet it was like trying to organize the world. Every little thing in the world, corporeal and incorporeal, has an aspect and a name and it is jumbling around in your mind and looking at you with a different face until you let it fall into place and fall into families. There’s the Things You Do and then there’s the Things. There’s the People, and there’s the Animals, and there’s the Buildings. There’s the Things You Were Doing and the Things You Are Doing, the Things You Did and the Things You Will Do. There’s the Sicknesses and the Sports. Those are the big animals. And then there’s the strange and unfamiliar things that other people have done that you have never heard of. Those are the small animals. Those are the little birds that you take extra time with, to examine their unique plumage, to appreciate that this bird only lives on a particular tree in a particular forest and only a particular people hear it. There are limitless numbers of those little birds out there.