ABSTRACT

It was Trench who read two important papers to the Philological Society in 1857 which led to the Proposal set out below. This in turn resulted in the project which became the New (subsequently Oxford) English Dictionary published between 1888 and 1933. Trench's papers 'On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries' fulfilled the task of reviewing previous dictionaries and setting out a plan for a future work which would rectify their faults. Many of the points in the Proposal are in fact taken from Trench's papers, not the least his contention that the dictionary should be 'an historical monument, the history of a nation contemplated from one point of view'. The linkage of language and nation demonstrates once more how important this line of thought was in the linguistic study of the period. It is a relationship which was to have important implications for the study of literature, history and politics.