James Murray

Again, I think a lot more recent than people probably would expect.

It seems like a good time to mention that Hanging in the OED Library is a painting of a zombie version of James Murray, the OED's first editor.

I think one of our colleagues saw it for sale online and thought that would be an interesting addition to our library.

I mean, I have no idea why someone painted it in the first place.

But it just makes me think of that.

Um, lexicographical and linguist JAH Murray was walking across the Oxford University campus on the evening of August thir- or 31st 1895 when he saw a brilliant luminous body which suddenly emerged over the tops of the trees before me on the left and moved eastward across the sky and in front of me.

Its appearance at first glance suggests a brilliant meteor, considerable larger than Venus at her greatest brilliance.

But its slowness of motion made me doubt which, whether it was not, or not some artificial firework.

... make an effort to cover World English as, as well as it could, I think.

Yeah, and imagine how, what our, you know, predecessors from, from James Murray's time had to do just to get, you know, abaca, ag- agrom, and almira into the dictionary.

So they would've had to-

Yeah

These examples show how English speakers are constantly repurposing existing forms to fill lexical gaps.

James Murray, the dictionary editor who coined backformation in 1889, was fascinated by such phenomena.

He noticed that many English verbs seemed to be derived from nouns with an ion suffix, like resurrect from resurrection.

By backforming the verb, speakers could create a more natural action word that fit their communicative needs.