ABSTRACT
James Murray (1837–1915), the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), referred to foreign words as ‘uncommon words’, and as ‘aliens and denizens’ of the English language. As a lexicographer working at the peak of the explosion of new words in the early twentieth century, he struggled with the question of how best to classify words that had entered English from other languages. Were they English words or not? On what grounds? Like most of the editors of the OED after him, he held an inclusive view as the following quote shows.
The English Language is the language of Englishmen! Of which Englishmen? Of all Englishmen or of some Englishmen? … Does it include the English of Great Britain and the English of America, the English of Australia, and of South Africa, and of those most assertive Englishmen, the Englishmen of India, who live in bungalows, hunt in jungles, wear terai hats or puggaries and pyjamas, write chits instead of letters and eat kedgeree and chutni? Yes! In its most comprehensive sense, and as an object of historical study, it includes all these; they are all forms of English.
(Murray 1911:18)