Philological Society

Trench saw that without that temporal lens, you lose the story of how a word moves through culture, law, and technology.

At the Philological Society in eighteen fifty-seven, he called out these deficiencies with a tone that was almost theatrical.

Imagine him standing in front of scholars and saying, "Our dictionaries are blind to history." The reaction was twofold.

Some scoffed, but others were intrigued enough to start collecting quotations.