Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: The Bizarre Origin of the Oxford English Dictionary
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Oh, fellow Ridiculous Historians, friends and neighbors. I don't know
- 0:04Speaker 1: about you all, but this is one of my, uh,
- 0:08Speaker 1: maybe not favorite of our classic episodes, but it's one
- 0:11Speaker 1: that really stuck with me as a word nerd.
- 0:14Speaker 2: It's a bit of a pet subject for you, Ben, wordery, etymology, oh,
- 0:20Speaker 2: wordsmith ory.
- 0:22Speaker 1: So say, we all KNOWL I know, we're both. We're
- 0:25Speaker 1: both big fans of reference works, etymology, weird word facts,
- 0:29Speaker 1: and the last word in uh. I heard it in
- 0:34Speaker 1: dictionaries here in uh. This language is the Oxford English Dictionary.
- 0:40Speaker 2: We like to call it the Oxford English Dictionary.
- 0:44Speaker 1: Yeah, we or the OED if nasty. But the thing is,
- 0:49Speaker 1: we started looking into the origin story here and we
- 0:54Speaker 1: found something that was just a roller coaster. Man.
- 0:58Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're a coaster and an etymology fan and
- 1:02Speaker 2: perhaps a bit of a wordsmith yourself, you're going to
- 1:03Speaker 2: really dig this one on the bizarre origin of the
- 1:07Speaker 2: OED aka the Oxford English Dictionary.
- 1:14Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. We're here, we're live, well,
- 1:42Speaker 1: we're recording this live. Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians.
- 1:47Speaker 1: My name is Ben. We are of course joined with
- 1:49Speaker 1: our super producer Casey pegram My Trusty co host Noel
- 1:54Speaker 1: is off on some lovely adventures on the other side
- 1:58Speaker 1: of the country, but will return very soon. Speaking of returning,
- 2:02Speaker 1: we are incredibly fortunate today to have our returning guest
- 2:07Speaker 1: host joining us, Christopher Hasiotis.
- 2:10Speaker 3: Thanks for coming, Man, Thanks for having me, Ben, thanks
- 2:12Speaker 3: for having me, Casey, Noel, wherever you are, whenever you are,
- 2:16Speaker 3: however you are, thank you.
- 2:18Speaker 1: Yes, oh man, I can't wait until I hope we
- 2:21Speaker 1: can reveal some of the cool stuff that Nol is
- 2:24Speaker 1: working on.
- 2:25Speaker 3: But what I really wish we're happening right now is
- 2:27Speaker 3: that we would talk about Nol not being here and
- 2:30Speaker 3: then anyone listening to this podcast would just slowly turn
- 2:34Speaker 3: around and he's standing right behind them.
- 2:36Speaker 1: Oh that's great.
- 2:37Speaker 3: No, that's my dream. It's my dream. But it was
- 2:42Speaker 3: also it was Halloween recently, so maybe I'm still in
- 2:44Speaker 3: that mindset. I'm definitely still in that mindset.
- 2:47Speaker 1: Oh man, It's the most wonderful time of the year.
- 2:49Speaker 1: I love Halloween. Hey, what did you do for Halloween?
- 2:52Speaker 3: Dressed up as a woodland creature? I was kind of
- 2:54Speaker 3: Wolfe took the family around the neighborhood and did not
- 2:58Speaker 3: accept any candy because we've got a little baby who's
- 3:01Speaker 3: not old enough for candy yet. And I would feel
- 3:04Speaker 3: like a real bomb taking candy from the well, you know,
- 3:07Speaker 3: taking candy for a baby who couldn't eat it, under
- 3:10Speaker 3: the pretenses that it's really for me. And I'm grown man,
- 3:14Speaker 3: I can afford my own candy.
- 3:15Speaker 1: There you go. That's that speaks highly. That speaks to
- 3:19Speaker 1: your character in a very complimentary way. We'll see your
- 3:23Speaker 1: candy ethics are on point. I think that's something to
- 3:25Speaker 1: be proud of.
- 3:26Speaker 3: Thank you.
- 3:27Speaker 1: I would have done the opposite.
- 3:29Speaker 3: You would have just taken a baby around. Yes, yeah,
- 3:33Speaker 3: I did think, like maybe it would be fun to
- 3:35Speaker 3: push a stroller around the neighborhood, but with no baby
- 3:37Speaker 3: in there, and just be the person with an empty stroller.
- 3:41Speaker 1: Oh that's weird. That's weird, Christopher.
- 3:43Speaker 3: But uh, it's not Halloween anymore, right, we should divest
- 3:47Speaker 3: these spooky thoughts from our souls.
- 3:50Speaker 1: Hey, I'm always so reluctant to give up the ghost
- 3:53Speaker 1: of Halloween. But you're right. Things move on progress. That's
- 3:57Speaker 1: the name of the game for the human spece, hopefully
- 4:01Speaker 1: in theory and Today's episode is something that I thought
- 4:06Speaker 1: would be fascinating for anybody who's a fan of words,
- 4:10Speaker 1: anyone who's a fan of writing. Today's episode is about
- 4:15Speaker 1: the strange origin of the Oxford English Dictionary. Now, this
- 4:20Speaker 1: is something that you and I in particular, have have
- 4:22Speaker 1: used pretty frequently over the years.
- 4:24Speaker 3: I have, Yeah, dictionaries of many kinds I think come
- 4:27Speaker 3: in super handy. Whether you're a professional writer, whether you're
- 4:30Speaker 3: an amateur writer, whether you don't really care about writing
- 4:34Speaker 3: at all, but you want to know what a word means,
- 4:36Speaker 3: you can look it up in the dictionary. It's a
- 4:38Speaker 3: great thing.
- 4:39Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's funny that you mentioned this because Noel
- 4:43Speaker 1: and I will often have conversations where one of us
- 4:49Speaker 1: is on a rant about something and then we decide
- 4:52Speaker 1: to use a word because it sounds particularly enticing, you know,
- 4:57Speaker 1: only to later, usually when it's just the two of
- 5:00Speaker 1: us hanging out, only for us to later go, Okay,
- 5:03Speaker 1: one of us needs to look that up and make
- 5:05Speaker 1: sure it means what we think it means.
- 5:07Speaker 3: We're using the right meaning where you were saying it properly.
- 5:10Speaker 3: I mean, that's what the dictionary is for. But also
- 5:14Speaker 3: that's what Facebook is for too right and social media.
- 5:17Speaker 3: I think anyone who is anyone in the podcast world's
- 5:21Speaker 3: very familiar with mispronounced words. There's a lot of words
- 5:25Speaker 3: out there, and you might accidentally say something a little incorrectly.
- 5:27Speaker 3: But we rely on people like Ridiculous Historians the Facebook
- 5:32Speaker 3: group associated with this fine podcast to point out in
- 5:35Speaker 3: a constructive and critical manner, any foible, any misstep, any
- 5:40Speaker 3: misuse of a ward.
- 5:43Speaker 1: Aw. Oh man, you really put us on the tightrope here, man.
- 5:48Speaker 1: All right, well, let's give it a go. The Oxford
- 5:53Speaker 1: English Dictionary has been around for a long time, but
- 5:56Speaker 1: perhaps not as long as many of us would assume.
- 6:02Speaker 1: The work on the dictionary began, I guess in a
- 6:04Speaker 1: larger historical context is fairly recent. It began in eighteen
- 6:09Speaker 1: fifty seven.
- 6:10Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's when there was a call put out
- 6:13Speaker 3: for a collection of words, a definition of words spanning
- 6:18Speaker 3: the twelfth century to the present day. At the time.
- 6:23Speaker 3: Work actually didn't get underway though, until the late eighteen
- 6:27Speaker 3: seventies eighteen seventy nine, I believe, And it took five
- 6:30Speaker 3: years for the first volume of the OED, as the
- 6:34Speaker 3: kids on the street call it to be published.
- 6:37Speaker 1: Right right, and here we introduce our first character for
- 6:41Speaker 1: this story, a fellow named Professor James Murray. It was
- 6:45Speaker 1: a challenging assignment for Murray, who was the editor of
- 6:50Speaker 1: this of this dictionary. The way the process worked was
- 6:53Speaker 1: relatively simple. People would send in entries for words, and
- 6:58Speaker 1: the Oxford English Dictionary functions as what's called an historical dictionary,
- 7:03Speaker 1: meaning it will talk about the development of a word
- 7:08Speaker 1: rather than just its present day usage. So you'll see
- 7:11Speaker 1: a little bit of etymology in the dictionary.
- 7:13Speaker 3: You'll see a lot of etymology. I mean, the thing
- 7:15Speaker 3: about the Oxford English Dictionary is it doesn't just give
- 7:18Speaker 3: you the definition of the word, right, it goes into
- 7:20Speaker 3: the history of the word. We said, the first volume
- 7:22Speaker 3: of the dictionary wasn't published until eighteen eighty four. I mean,
- 7:27Speaker 3: this was a lifelong pursuit from Murray and his team.
- 7:29Speaker 3: The final volume of the dictionary wasn't published until nineteen
- 7:32Speaker 3: twenty eight. That's crazy.
- 7:34Speaker 1: Yeah, that's insane. And it took a lot of blood,
- 7:39Speaker 1: sweat and tears, because we have to remember it was
- 7:43Speaker 1: much more difficult to aggregate information back then, you know
- 7:46Speaker 1: what I mean. These people had to literally write this
- 7:48Speaker 1: stuff out, usually by hand and send it be a post.
- 7:52Speaker 3: Yeah, a majority of us in the modern world, and
- 7:54Speaker 3: I would assume most of us listening to this podcast.
- 7:58Speaker 3: We live in a wealth of information. We have so
- 8:01Speaker 3: many things available to us, We have so much knowledge
- 8:03Speaker 3: available to us. But I think it's really, really, really
- 8:06Speaker 3: easy to take that for granted. Right, you just look
- 8:09Speaker 3: something up. But for you to look something up, another
- 8:12Speaker 3: human being had to have put that thing in a
- 8:14Speaker 3: place for it to be searchable in the first place. So,
- 8:18Speaker 3: I mean, imagine the task of speaking a language and thinking,
- 8:22Speaker 3: you know what, all these words we just said in
- 8:25Speaker 3: the past twenty seconds, I just used forty of them.
- 8:29Speaker 3: Let's catalog them, let's itemize them, let's label them. I mean,
- 8:34Speaker 3: this is it's a crazy undertaking. It's wild. You have
- 8:38Speaker 3: to define what a language is, what is inside the language,
- 8:43Speaker 3: what's outside the language. You have to talk to linguistics,
- 8:45Speaker 3: you have to talk to anthropologists, you have to talk
- 8:48Speaker 3: to authors and books and what's gobbledegook? Right, which is
- 8:53Speaker 3: that in the dictionary? I don't know.
- 8:54Speaker 1: I believe the actually it is in there, isn't it? Yeah,
- 8:57Speaker 1: So that I think that's a very good way to
- 9:00Speaker 1: paint the picture here. Professor James Murray knew this was
- 9:05Speaker 1: going to be a huge, laborious, herculean effort. However, he
- 9:12Speaker 1: underestimated the enormity of the task. When they first agreed
- 9:18Speaker 1: to edit this new English dictionary, they thought, this is
- 9:22Speaker 1: going to take a decade, and this will probably be gosh,
- 9:25Speaker 1: I don't know, guys, around seven thousand pages long in
- 9:29Speaker 1: four volumes. Let's call it four volumes. But they ended
- 9:32Speaker 1: up with something much much larger. By the time the
- 9:34Speaker 1: final results are published in nineteen twenty eight, it's twelve
- 9:38Speaker 1: volumes long. It is comprised of four hundred and fourteen
- 9:43Speaker 1: eight hundred and twenty five words defined, and it has
- 9:46Speaker 1: almost two million citations employed to illustrate what they mean.
- 9:51Speaker 1: As Murray is working on this, he builds a corrugated
- 9:55Speaker 1: iron shed that he decides to call the Scriptorium, and
- 10:00Speaker 1: the Scriptorium houses him and his small team of assistants,
- 10:03Speaker 1: as well as this deluge of slips of paper that
- 10:07Speaker 1: have been mailed to them that are each you know,
- 10:10Speaker 1: an entry in the dictionary.
- 10:12Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is all taking place in the UK,
- 10:15Speaker 3: So this is just one country, you know, right, This
- 10:17Speaker 3: is this isn't even trying to get the breadth of
- 10:20Speaker 3: global knowledge. I do really like the name scriptorium. I
- 10:24Speaker 3: imagine Murray having a rough day at home, maybe the
- 10:27Speaker 3: kids are being kind of a pain, and he storms
- 10:29Speaker 3: out of his house, slams the door, say I'm going
- 10:30Speaker 3: to the Scriptorium. I can't handle this. To the scriptorium,
- 10:34Speaker 3: to the Scriptorium.
- 10:35Speaker 1: I am just going to start saying that I am
- 10:37Speaker 1: going to find something to our office. I'm going to
- 10:40Speaker 1: label it the scriptorium. It won't be this studio that's
- 10:43Speaker 1: two on the nose, but I'm looking for his scriptorium.
- 10:45Speaker 3: Next time you shout, I'm off to the scriptorium. I'm
- 10:48Speaker 3: really excited to see all of our coworkers look around
- 10:50Speaker 3: bemusedly and confusedly and befuddledly. And but you and I
- 10:56Speaker 3: will share something. I'll know what you're doing.
- 10:58Speaker 1: And you for listening in casey or you and this,
- 11:00Speaker 1: I'm totally in casey on the case, ladies and gentlemen.
- 11:05Speaker 1: So as as people are responding to this call, this
- 11:10Speaker 1: crowdsourcing of dictionary entries, Professor Murray begins to notice that
- 11:16Speaker 1: there's one shining star out of all of his correspondents,
- 11:21Speaker 1: the most prolific. The most consistent correspondent, the man who
- 11:25Speaker 1: was sent in more than ten thousand entries to this
- 11:29Speaker 1: developing dictionary a guy named doctor William C. Minor. All
- 11:35Speaker 1: that Murray knows about Minor is that he is a
- 11:38Speaker 1: doctor who is a surgeon. He lives in Crowthorne, in
- 11:43Speaker 1: the English countryside in Berkshire, and Murray reasonably assumes that
- 11:49Speaker 1: Minor must be quote a practicing medical man of literary
- 11:53Speaker 1: taste with a good deal of leto lethio.
- 11:57Speaker 3: I like, yeah, sounds like the kind of guy who
- 12:00Speaker 3: would send in entries to the dictionary the Dictionary Project.
- 12:06Speaker 3: Did they call it the Dictionary Project at the time?
- 12:08Speaker 3: I think they did. I mean, dictionaries existed before the OED,
- 12:11Speaker 3: so I think the word probably was out there.
- 12:13Speaker 1: And here's here's where we introduce our second character. Uh,
- 12:17Speaker 1: doctor William Chester Minor an American.
- 12:22Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so you've got this American guy who's contributing
- 12:27Speaker 3: to one of the pillars of the English language. What
- 12:31Speaker 3: do we know about doctor Minor.
- 12:33Speaker 1: Well, we know that, as you said, he does reside
- 12:36Speaker 1: in the UK. He was an American, not only an American,
- 12:41Speaker 1: but a surgeon. Not only a surgeon, but a veteran.
- 12:44Speaker 3: A veteran, but he also had sort of a global background, right,
- 12:49Speaker 3: so he existed in a world where many languages were
- 12:52Speaker 3: available to him. His parents were from New England. They
- 12:55Speaker 3: were missionaries, and Minor was actually born in Ceylon, which
- 12:59Speaker 3: today is known as Sri Lanka. So he grew up
- 13:03Speaker 3: in the son of the son of Americans in a
- 13:07Speaker 3: former British colony. A lot of languages are kind of
- 13:10Speaker 3: swirling around him. He's in that miliu. He comes back
- 13:14Speaker 3: to the US and he ends up fighting in the
- 13:15Speaker 3: Civil War. M hm. He's fighting, but he's working as
- 13:20Speaker 3: a surgeon, right, So he's a he's a medical doctor.
- 13:22Speaker 3: He's in the Civil War. He experiences some horrific things,
- 13:28Speaker 3: as many people did, but it seems to have really
- 13:32Speaker 3: taken a toll on doctor Minor, on his mental health,
- 13:36Speaker 3: on his well being. Really rough stuff. I mean, he
- 13:39Speaker 3: was in situations where he saw sort of incendiary attacks.
- 13:45Speaker 3: He witnessed other soldiers burning to death. Yeah, this is terrible, Ben,
- 13:51Speaker 3: I don't know if you know about this, but what
- 13:53Speaker 3: doctor Minor was ordered to do to a certain deserter.
- 13:56Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's it's a terrible story. So he served,
- 14:02Speaker 1: as you said, in various incredibly bloody conflicts, including the
- 14:06Speaker 1: Battle of the Wilderness in eighteen sixty four, which was
- 14:09Speaker 1: a bloodbath. The particular story we're talking about now concerns
- 14:16Speaker 1: an Irish soldier in the Union Army. Minor was told
- 14:21Speaker 1: to punish the soldier carry out his punishment by branding
- 14:25Speaker 1: him on the face with a hot iron with a
- 14:28Speaker 1: capital D for deserter.
- 14:31Speaker 3: Yeah. So this was an Irish citizen who is fighting
- 14:34Speaker 3: for the cause of the Union, but decided he was
- 14:37Speaker 3: done with the battle, wanted to leave, wanted to leave
- 14:39Speaker 3: the army, was i asseemed captured, put in the brig
- 14:42Speaker 3: and Minor was ordered to brand this guy against his wishes,
- 14:46Speaker 3: against the wishes of both of them, I think.
- 14:48Speaker 1: And this haunts him, This affects him for the rest
- 14:53Speaker 1: of his life. At the end of the American Civil War,
- 15:02Speaker 1: he is still serving. He's in New York City for
- 15:04Speaker 1: a time. He spends a lot of his time living
- 15:09Speaker 1: in the CD underbelly of New York. If he's not working,
- 15:12Speaker 1: he's off in the Red Light District cavorting, having some
- 15:17Speaker 1: frolic time, right.
- 15:18Speaker 3: I mean, it's not uncommon for soldiers who come home
- 15:23Speaker 3: from war, to have a really rough time, to look
- 15:26Speaker 3: for solace in places they might not otherwise have in
- 15:29Speaker 3: the past, to have a hard time keeping things together,
- 15:33Speaker 3: to undertake risky activity, to i mean even to see
- 15:39Speaker 3: things that aren't there, to imagine a reality that doesn't
- 15:42Speaker 3: line up with the reality experience by the majority of us.
- 15:44Speaker 1: Absolutely, And by eighteen sixty seven, the Army is completely
- 15:50Speaker 1: done with his behavior. They find that it is unethical
- 15:55Speaker 1: and a moral so they transfer him to a remote
- 15:59Speaker 1: post and Florida, And we're gonna let's let's pause right there,
- 16:03Speaker 1: because Professor Murray doesn't know any of this. He doesn't
- 16:07Speaker 1: know anything about Minor's past. He only knows that the
- 16:10Speaker 1: guy has medical knowledge, seems to be living in either
- 16:14Speaker 1: retirement or he's relatively well off, and the guy has
- 16:18Speaker 1: a lot of time on his hands, and he loves words.
- 16:21Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's that's a little background about Minor and
- 16:24Speaker 3: and Minor is sending in these entries to the Oxford
- 16:27Speaker 3: English Dictionary Project to Professor Murray, and they seem to
- 16:31Speaker 3: be really great entries. They're really detailed, they're really varied,
- 16:34Speaker 3: they are voluminous, they are deeply researched.
- 16:37Speaker 1: What Professor Murray did not know was that his most
- 16:42Speaker 1: faithful correspondent and contributor was writing to him from a
- 16:48Speaker 1: lunatic asylum where he was confined for committing homicide.
- 16:54Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 16:54Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's the that's the strangest part of it,
- 16:59Speaker 1: And it sounds like something you could maybe have a weird,
- 17:02Speaker 1: nervous laugh about. But the story itself is quite tragic.
- 17:06Speaker 1: It turns out that doctor Minor was not in full
- 17:11Speaker 1: possession of his faculties.
- 17:13Speaker 3: Yeah, and at this point he had moved to London.
- 17:15Speaker 1: Right right, Okay, So he was diagnosed in eighteen sixty
- 17:19Speaker 1: eight as delusional and he was considered a suicide and
- 17:23Speaker 1: homicide risk. So with his consent, he was admitted to
- 17:28Speaker 1: the Government Hospital for the Insane and Washing DC and
- 17:31Speaker 1: officially retired from the US Army. In eighteen seventy one,
- 17:34Speaker 1: he was released and he visited his family and friends
- 17:38Speaker 1: and then bordered a ship to London, hoping that a
- 17:41Speaker 1: change of scenery would quote cure him. But his paranoia
- 17:46Speaker 1: followed him across.
- 17:48Speaker 3: The Atlanta And that's a not uncommon treatment at the time.
- 17:53Speaker 3: I mean, we're back in the days before modern psychology,
- 17:56Speaker 3: certainly before modern psychiatric drugs and any sort of treatment
- 17:59Speaker 3: talked therapy, any sort of rehabilitation like that. I mean,
- 18:03Speaker 3: there's just a lunatic asylum or a change of scenery.
- 18:08Speaker 3: You know, maybe something different will be nice for him.
- 18:10Speaker 3: Maybe being in the United States is reminding him of
- 18:14Speaker 3: the horrors he witnessed. Maybe he's too close to the brothels.
- 18:19Speaker 3: Let's just let's send him to England.
- 18:22Speaker 1: Yeah, and his family had the means to support this
- 18:26Speaker 1: travel because it was an opportunity that many people at
- 18:29Speaker 1: the time could not have reasonably pursued. But the problem
- 18:34Speaker 1: was that his untreated mental condition began to worsen. He
- 18:40Speaker 1: was having delusions, he was having crazy mood swings, and
- 18:44Speaker 1: he was sinking deeper and deeper into paranoia. Particularly as
- 18:48Speaker 1: his condition escalated, he would become more and more fixated
- 18:52Speaker 1: on paranoid thoughts about people with Irish nationality due to
- 18:57Speaker 1: that horrible story you mentioned earlier when he had to
- 18:59Speaker 1: brand Guy in the face. He settles originally in a
- 19:02Speaker 1: place called Lambeth.
- 19:03Speaker 3: Yeah, and Lambeth Street is It's in London. It's kind
- 19:06Speaker 3: of a city neighborhood. And this, I think is the
- 19:09Speaker 3: point when we should introduce the next character in this tale,
- 19:13Speaker 3: this tragedy, if we want to call it a tragedy,
- 19:15Speaker 3: we're not the only ones, because this is what ends
- 19:18Speaker 3: up being called at the time, the Lambeth tragedy. George
- 19:22Speaker 3: Merritt is the next entry into this tale. George Merritt
- 19:26Speaker 3: is a working man. He takes a walk every day
- 19:29Speaker 3: to the Red Lion Brewery in London. And one day
- 19:32Speaker 3: he's taking a walk and he encounters doctor Minor.
- 19:35Speaker 1: And Doctor Miner, who is in the grips of a
- 19:40Speaker 1: mental episode, feels threatened right by George Merritt believes that
- 19:45Speaker 1: Merritt has broken into his room at some point and
- 19:51Speaker 1: shoots and kills George.
- 19:53Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is this is where I you know,
- 19:56Speaker 3: I tried to find some newspaper reports from the time
- 19:58Speaker 3: and it's really unclear to me, and I think this
- 20:00Speaker 3: is just the case in reporting at the time. But
- 20:03Speaker 3: I don't know exactly whether Merritt was trying to enter
- 20:08Speaker 3: a door near where Minor was living, or if this
- 20:14Speaker 3: happened near the brewery or well. So the records show
- 20:19Speaker 3: that Merritt was shot in the back as he was
- 20:22Speaker 3: walking away from Minor, right, so Minor perhaps was in
- 20:27Speaker 3: his home experiencing one of these delusions and just burst
- 20:30Speaker 3: out onto the street and thought that the first person
- 20:33Speaker 3: he saw was the imagined culprit.
- 20:36Speaker 1: And of course the authorities become involved. There is a trial,
- 20:40Speaker 1: and during the trial the full extent of Minor's insanity
- 20:46Speaker 1: becomes revealed for the first time in public, and that's
- 20:51Speaker 1: part of what propels the Lambeth tragedy to the stage
- 20:54Speaker 1: of international news. Minor is eventually judged not guilty on
- 20:59Speaker 1: ground zones of insanity, and he is sent to be
- 21:03Speaker 1: detained in England's newest asylum, but they don't ever say
- 21:10Speaker 1: how long he's going to be there.
- 21:12Speaker 3: I think this is the sort of thing where, you know,
- 21:14Speaker 3: on the one hand, you can see this as a
- 21:18Speaker 3: unenlightened treatment. You know, he's not just put to death
- 21:21Speaker 3: for murder. You know, it seems like they're doing the
- 21:23Speaker 3: nice thing. They're sending him off to a place where
- 21:26Speaker 3: he can be away from people he might harm. But
- 21:29Speaker 3: there's an understanding that there's something not chemically operating in
- 21:34Speaker 3: the mind. It's maybe not entirely his fault, right, So
- 21:37Speaker 3: he's sent to Broad Moore, which is a place for
- 21:39Speaker 3: the criminally insane that sounds like a nice thing, but
- 21:42Speaker 3: the conditions weren't amazing. And people at the time, you know,
- 21:47Speaker 3: it's not like they were called patients. They weren't treated
- 21:49Speaker 3: as folks with a medical issue. These the people at Broadmore,
- 21:54Speaker 3: were referred to as criminals or as lunatics. Basically, you're
- 21:59Speaker 3: looking at it situation where you're put in a room,
- 22:01Speaker 3: the door is locked, and there's not a lot of treatment.
- 22:04Speaker 3: You're just removed from society. Minor did have his own cell,
- 22:09Speaker 3: and Minor actually had a second cell, right, so he
- 22:12Speaker 3: had two adjoining cells, the second of which was used
- 22:15Speaker 3: for his significantly voluminous collection of antiquarian books.
- 22:21Speaker 1: That's right. He was living the high life, well compared
- 22:26Speaker 1: to other inmates or other patients. But they didn't call
- 22:29Speaker 1: him patients. They call them lunatics and criminals, right, Yeah,
- 22:32Speaker 1: So he had this extensive collection of books. He was
- 22:38Speaker 1: very well read person, and the American Vice Consul General
- 22:43Speaker 1: directly intervened to allow doctor Minor to have these amenities.
- 22:49Speaker 3: Right. Although he's in England and he had committed his
- 22:51Speaker 3: crime there, he's still a US citizen and a veteran
- 22:55Speaker 3: of the Union Army, so there's some consideration being given.
- 23:00Speaker 1: And he has correspondence as well. The entire time. He
- 23:05Speaker 1: has relationships with book dealers, booksellers in Oxford in particular,
- 23:12Speaker 1: and it is through this association that he hears about
- 23:16Speaker 1: the open call for submissions to what will become the
- 23:19Speaker 1: Oxford English Dictionary. And so a lot of this has
- 23:24Speaker 1: lost to history, but we can reasonably imagine what doctor
- 23:30Speaker 1: Miner's reaction was. It's not like he's gonna go travel anywhere.
- 23:35Speaker 1: It's not like he is living a super stressful life
- 23:38Speaker 1: full of deadlines. As recounted in a fantastic book called
- 23:43Speaker 1: The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder Insanity
- 23:45Speaker 1: in the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester, and.
- 23:49Speaker 3: That came out in nineteen ninety eight.
- 23:51Speaker 1: Yes, that is correct. As recounted in this book, Minor
- 23:55Speaker 1: saw this as somewhat of an escape, you know what
- 23:58Speaker 1: I mean.
- 23:59Speaker 3: It's a way, it's a way to his body, maybe
- 24:02Speaker 3: in these four walls, but it's a way for him
- 24:04Speaker 3: to send his thoughts and his influence beyond his cell.
- 24:10Speaker 1: Absolutely, and it's a necessary escape, right. But he knew,
- 24:17Speaker 1: regardless of his stability at the time, he knew that
- 24:22Speaker 1: his submissions might run the chance of being rejected. Essentially,
- 24:26Speaker 1: he might not be able to play the game if
- 24:28Speaker 1: he revealed too much about himself. So he always signed
- 24:31Speaker 1: his letters the same way Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire. And that
- 24:36Speaker 1: means his identity remained enigmatic to everybody who's working on
- 24:40Speaker 1: the dictionary for years and years and years. Murray and
- 24:43Speaker 1: Minor never meet.
- 24:45Speaker 3: No And at this point he kind of builds up
- 24:48Speaker 3: his own reputation, not based on who he is, not
- 24:51Speaker 3: based on the letters after his name. If he's a
- 24:54Speaker 3: you know, you don't have this weight of authority from
- 24:59Speaker 3: your job, from your name, from your class. This authority
- 25:03Speaker 3: that he gains with the OED project is based solely
- 25:07Speaker 3: on his work and through these submissions, I mean they
- 25:12Speaker 3: prove invaluable because he's got this collection of antiquarian books,
- 25:15Speaker 3: books that are out of print, books that are ancient,
- 25:17Speaker 3: books that are not widely used. So he's combing through
- 25:20Speaker 3: these books, he comes up with this massive index of
- 25:23Speaker 3: thousands of words. He defines them, he provides their use
- 25:28Speaker 3: in a sentence, which you know sounds like a spelling
- 25:31Speaker 3: be kind of thing, right, But that's how you know
- 25:33Speaker 3: what a word is, and the way you define a
- 25:37Speaker 3: word is to see how it's used. And if you
- 25:40Speaker 3: want to look at a word that you don't know
- 25:42Speaker 3: or that other people don't know, you have to show
- 25:44Speaker 3: how it has been used in the past. And that's
- 25:47Speaker 3: where his collection of books comes in, super handy.
- 25:49Speaker 1: Yeah, and eventually you'll hear a couple of different counts
- 25:53Speaker 1: of this. But eventually Murray decides that he has to
- 25:57Speaker 1: meet his most valuable contributor. And this comes to a
- 26:01Speaker 1: head in eighteen ninety seven. There's an event they're gonna
- 26:08Speaker 1: hold called the Great Dictionary Dinner, and Murray is very
- 26:11Speaker 1: much looking forward to meeting his mysterious again, most prolific,
- 26:15Speaker 1: most accurate correspondent. But the guy doesn't show up.
- 26:18Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I mean they've been working on this dictionary,
- 26:20Speaker 3: they put all this work into it, They have all
- 26:22Speaker 3: these different contributors, they have people they rely on greatly.
- 26:25Speaker 3: I mean think of this as the you know on Wikipedia,
- 26:29Speaker 3: the people who have the verified accounts yelp, the super
- 26:34Speaker 3: or whatever yelp or you know, like he's one of
- 26:36Speaker 3: the insiders. And he's invited, we're told, and he doesn't
- 26:39Speaker 3: show up.
- 26:40Speaker 1: Right, And so Minor says you know what, I'm going
- 26:42Speaker 1: to be the change. I'm going to go visit this guy.
- 26:45Speaker 1: So he travels to broad More and he sees this.
- 26:50Speaker 1: We can paint the scene here. He sees this huge
- 26:53Speaker 1: Victorian mansion, and he's justifying those assumptions, right, they feel
- 26:59Speaker 1: like they're being very I was just okay.
- 27:01Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean he'd never been there. The story
- 27:03Speaker 3: goes that he thought, so he had this address, and
- 27:06Speaker 3: so he thinks like, okay, like this must be where
- 27:08Speaker 3: a professor lives or a doctor, a medical man. Yeah,
- 27:11Speaker 3: a nice house. So he shows up and he sees
- 27:13Speaker 3: this massive institution. He says, huh, I thought I was
- 27:17Speaker 3: going to someone's house. This is an institution.
- 27:20Speaker 1: I guess he's mailing me from his office.
- 27:22Speaker 3: Yeah, he's probably the director or something like that.
- 27:25Speaker 1: Right, So he so he started to realize things are
- 27:29Speaker 1: a little wonky, and he's just finding the most plausible
- 27:33Speaker 1: explanation he can for it. And like you say, Christopher,
- 27:36Speaker 1: he thinks, okay, well, this guy is a director of
- 27:40Speaker 1: this asylum. Because you could see the side. He knows
- 27:42Speaker 1: it's an asylum.
- 27:43Speaker 3: No, yeah, and you know it may even have lightning
- 27:46Speaker 3: bolts in the background or that's how I imagine that
- 27:50Speaker 3: when you happen upon an asylum and that you didn't
- 27:51Speaker 3: know was an asylum. Yes, thunder and lightning.
- 27:54Speaker 1: We've all been there, and it's the storm begins and
- 27:58Speaker 1: you have to stay there for the night.
- 27:59Speaker 3: Right, the strings start rising and the fog starts rolling in.
- 28:03Speaker 1: Are clear so not done with Halloween.
- 28:05Speaker 3: It's in me forever.
- 28:07Speaker 1: So he goes to This is a true story, folks.
- 28:10Speaker 1: He goes into the asylum. He meets the director of
- 28:13Speaker 1: the asylum, and he assumes that the director of the
- 28:17Speaker 1: asylum is the famous and mysterious Doctor Minor. No, says
- 28:24Speaker 1: the director, the doctor is an inmate. Would you like
- 28:29Speaker 1: to see his rooms, to which Murray Murray says yeah.
- 28:35Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sure to paint a picture for listeners and
- 28:39Speaker 3: ridiculous historians out there. At this point, what Doctor Miner
- 28:43Speaker 3: looks like is a little wise and fully bearded. I
- 28:48Speaker 3: would describe him as sort of a cross between Dumbledore.
- 28:52Speaker 3: There's a little bit of Dumbledore and a little bit
- 28:54Speaker 3: of Gandolf. Gandalf the white not the gray, because he's
- 28:58Speaker 3: got this like massive white beard. It was like very professorial,
- 29:01Speaker 3: but very learned looking, but clearly has been kind of locked.
- 29:05Speaker 1: Up for a while, Yeah, and has very In Professor
- 29:09Speaker 1: of the Madman, he is described as having very gentle
- 29:13Speaker 1: eyes that make him somewhat resemble portraits of Monette, Yeah,
- 29:17Speaker 1: which I thought I thought was poetic and very kind.
- 29:20Speaker 1: We do want to say there is one indication that
- 29:24Speaker 1: Murray had some inkling of something being wrong with doctor
- 29:29Speaker 1: Minor because a visitor from America in the late eighteen
- 29:33Speaker 1: eighties had thanked Murray for his kindness to poor doctor Minor.
- 29:37Speaker 1: He didn't really know.
- 29:39Speaker 3: He knew something was up, and that's something. But yeah,
- 29:42Speaker 3: if you either Winchester book, you'll find that there's that
- 29:46Speaker 3: story which we've just recounted, which is kind of the
- 29:48Speaker 3: summarized and popularized version of events. Winchester really digs into
- 29:53Speaker 3: that and kind of calls into question how true it
- 29:57Speaker 3: is and or how true it is. As you mentioned,
- 30:01Speaker 3: there's some question about what Murray knew and when and
- 30:05Speaker 3: the time of events. And this story did come out
- 30:08Speaker 3: at the time, and I think was probably kind of
- 30:11Speaker 3: summarized and popularized by newspaperman at the time.
- 30:15Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they were writing about as it was occurring.
- 30:18Speaker 1: We do know, however, that when they finally did meet.
- 30:21Speaker 1: They became genuine friends for a long time, and Murray
- 30:25Speaker 1: would continue to visit Minor at the asylum.
- 30:28Speaker 3: Again, this is the sort of it's the sort of
- 30:30Speaker 3: relationship built on words and work and trust built that way.
- 30:35Speaker 3: So you could consider it a nineteenth century catfishing if
- 30:39Speaker 3: you want, but I don't see it that way. You know,
- 30:43Speaker 3: they saw the value in one another. Murray valued the
- 30:46Speaker 3: knowledge of Minor, and I think this is also a
- 30:48Speaker 3: good lesson. I don't know that the lesson was taken
- 30:50Speaker 3: at the time, but I think for us looking back,
- 30:54Speaker 3: it's a really valuable way to see that people who
- 30:57Speaker 3: are incarcerated, people who have mental conditions, people who are
- 30:59Speaker 3: struggling with debilitation, don't lose their value either to themselves,
- 31:05Speaker 3: to their friends, or to society. You can have a
- 31:09Speaker 3: mental breakdown, you can lose an aspect of your personality,
- 31:12Speaker 3: of your life. That doesn't mean you've lost your intelligence.
- 31:15Speaker 3: It doesn't mean you've lost the knowledge you've accrued over
- 31:17Speaker 3: the years. Again, we can also, you know, I feel
- 31:21Speaker 3: like films like A Beautiful Mind or these these sort
- 31:24Speaker 3: of other films can romanticize mental illness too and say
- 31:29Speaker 3: that it's a that it's it's a struggle that's got
- 31:32Speaker 3: to be overcome. It's a tricky line. I mean, it's
- 31:35Speaker 3: it's a it's a messy thing to deal.
- 31:37Speaker 1: With, absolutely, and sometimes there are no clear answers for
- 31:43Speaker 1: how best to navigate the situation, especially back then, and
- 31:47Speaker 1: it's it just speaks, It speaks so highly to Professor
- 31:51Speaker 1: Murray's character that he doesn't reject this guy. He sees,
- 31:57Speaker 1: as you said, Christopher, the merit of Miner's work, and
- 32:00Speaker 1: he continues to visit him. He says, you know what,
- 32:04Speaker 1: nobody's perfect, but this guy is great at assembling these citations,
- 32:10Speaker 1: hunting stuff down for him. We need to keep them
- 32:13Speaker 1: in the game. And he spoke very highly of Minor
- 32:16Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. In eighteen ninety nine,
- 32:19Speaker 1: he said, we could easily illustrate the last four centuries
- 32:23Speaker 1: from doctor Miner's quotations alone.
- 32:26Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, his work was invaluable.
- 32:28Speaker 1: His work was invaluable, and unfortunately his condition continued to worsen.
- 32:38Speaker 1: In nineteenh two, he began having delusions that he was
- 32:43Speaker 1: being abducted from his rooms at night and taken around
- 32:48Speaker 1: the world where he was forced to commit sexual assault
- 32:52Speaker 1: and because of this. During one delusional episode, he castrated himself,
- 33:00Speaker 1: which is a very messy thing. Luckily, you know, he's
- 33:04Speaker 1: a surgeon, so he at least knew enough new enough
- 33:08Speaker 1: to do it without killing himself, and his health continued
- 33:12Speaker 1: to worsen.
- 33:14Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not the sort of thing that's going to
- 33:16Speaker 3: push your health into a better place.
- 33:18Speaker 1: True, and Murray, his faithful friend, now not just a colleague,
- 33:23Speaker 1: begins a campaign on Miner's behalf and he says, this
- 33:26Speaker 1: guy's been locked up in here for decades. He's one
- 33:29Speaker 1: of the most important contributors to what I feel is
- 33:32Speaker 1: one of the most important books in the world after
- 33:34Speaker 1: the Bible. He's harmless. Can we let him out? And
- 33:37Speaker 1: so Minor is, by direct orders from Home Secretary of
- 33:41Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, released from the asylum in nineteen ten. He's released.
- 33:46Speaker 1: He's instantly deported back to the United States and he
- 33:51Speaker 1: lives at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, where he is officially diagnosed
- 33:56Speaker 1: with what at the time they called dementia praecox, which
- 34:01Speaker 1: was a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder that usually began in
- 34:06Speaker 1: the late teens or early adulthood. This term was gradually
- 34:10Speaker 1: eventually replaced by the term schizophrenia.
- 34:14Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's the kind of thing that he likely
- 34:16Speaker 3: was experiencing internally physically, and then was I don't know,
- 34:23Speaker 3: triggered or enhanced by his experiences in the war.
- 34:27Speaker 1: Right, exactly exactly. And in nineteen twenty doctor Minor passes
- 34:33Speaker 1: away in Hartford, Connecticut. He had been moved in nineteen
- 34:37Speaker 1: nineteen to a retreat for the quote elderly insane. James
- 34:42Speaker 1: Murray passes away in nineteen fifteen. And if you'll remember
- 34:48Speaker 1: from our earlier mention of the dictionary, the final results
- 34:51Speaker 1: of the Oxford English Dictionary were not published until nineteen
- 34:54Speaker 1: twenty eight. So neither doctor Minor nor Professor Murray ever
- 34:58Speaker 1: got to witness or direct, you know, they never get
- 35:01Speaker 1: to hold the book.
- 35:03Speaker 3: Yeah, their life's work. It literally was their life's work,
- 35:06Speaker 3: and they did not live to see it completion. I mean,
- 35:09Speaker 3: but that's the story of so many great accomplishments in
- 35:13Speaker 3: human culture. When you think about something like the Sigatta
- 35:16Speaker 3: Familia Cathedral in Barcelona that Gudi was working on it.
- 35:21Speaker 3: He died decades ago and it's still underway. You know,
- 35:24Speaker 3: it's I think it's admirable to think that you might
- 35:28Speaker 3: contribute something to human knowledge and to human culture, that
- 35:32Speaker 3: you will put a process in motion. And you know,
- 35:35Speaker 3: granted Murray, Murray thought it would just take a brief
- 35:38Speaker 3: period of time to wrap up this dictionary thing, put
- 35:40Speaker 3: a couple of words on a page, this that and
- 35:42Speaker 3: the other, and we're done. No, I mean we're talking
- 35:45Speaker 3: like it goes well into the twenties. But to set
- 35:48Speaker 3: something in motion that goes beyond yourself is something you know,
- 35:52Speaker 3: not a lot of us get to do. And learning
- 35:55Speaker 3: the stories of the people behind these contributions to society
- 35:59Speaker 3: is sovaluable because I mean you think about like the mathematicians,
- 36:03Speaker 3: for instance, the women who contributed to the NASA missions
- 36:07Speaker 3: that were written about in Hidden Figures and there was
- 36:09Speaker 3: a movie. Basically, it's super important for us to know
- 36:12Speaker 3: that everything we're talking about in history was accomplished through
- 36:16Speaker 3: human undertaking. You just got to decide to do something,
- 36:19Speaker 3: get past any structural roadblocks that are in the way,
- 36:23Speaker 3: but push forward, and I mean people can accomplish them
- 36:26Speaker 3: really great things.
- 36:27Speaker 1: Yeah, it calls to mind that old proverb, what is
- 36:31Speaker 1: it a society grows great when old men plant trees
- 36:34Speaker 1: who shade they know they shall never sit in Have
- 36:37Speaker 1: you ever heard that one?
- 36:38Speaker 3: I haven't.
- 36:39Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, it's and that's that's the kind
- 36:42Speaker 1: of inspiring noble thing. We know that the Oxford English
- 36:48Speaker 1: Dictionary is, in a very real way a guide post
- 36:53Speaker 1: for the entirety of the English language. And you know,
- 36:58Speaker 1: I think we misuse the world sometimes, but it's it's noble,
- 37:01Speaker 1: it's truly noble to be able to participate in something
- 37:05Speaker 1: of that that level of significance. And here's hoping that
- 37:11Speaker 1: we can all get a chance to create something like this.
- 37:15Speaker 3: You know, that's that's a tall order, but we can try.
- 37:19Speaker 1: What you don't want to. We're kind of dictionary with
- 37:22Speaker 1: me for the rest of your life.
- 37:25Speaker 3: Do you tell me about your benefits? But what do
- 37:29Speaker 3: you what are you offering? Uh?
- 37:31Speaker 1: You know, I I've got a I've got a special
- 37:33Speaker 1: on I guess special on Dorito's okay, because of my
- 37:37Speaker 1: relationship with Robert Evans on behind the Bastards.
- 37:41Speaker 3: Ben have you ever have you ever actually so, have
- 37:43Speaker 3: you accessed the ied digitally? Have you held a copy
- 37:47Speaker 3: of the book itself?
- 37:48Speaker 1: I have?
- 37:49Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean these things are massive, like the huge books,
- 37:52Speaker 3: so dense. The one now that are like the most
- 37:55Speaker 3: current one that was kind of set in stone in
- 37:58Speaker 3: the nineties has like five hundred thousand wars. I don't
- 38:00Speaker 3: know if you've seen this. Some friends of mine and
- 38:02Speaker 3: I a while ago gave a friend this as a
- 38:06Speaker 3: wedding present. But you can buy the entire Oxford English
- 38:10Speaker 3: Dictionary in a compressed version. So it's kind of like
- 38:14Speaker 3: the size of a big book, but it's it's in
- 38:18Speaker 3: two volumes, kind of hardbound, comes in a box, but
- 38:21Speaker 3: it's the whole thing in there. And it comes with
- 38:24Speaker 3: a magnifying glass. Yes, yes, yes, but it's so the
- 38:28Speaker 3: print is so small you've really got to get in there.
- 38:30Speaker 3: But it's it's all of it. I mean we're talking
- 38:32Speaker 3: like more than two million citations. Like, it's just it's
- 38:36Speaker 3: so dense.
- 38:36Speaker 1: And the look that magnifying glass is not some cuty
- 38:39Speaker 1: marketing thing.
- 38:40Speaker 3: You need it, oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
- 38:42Speaker 1: And I don't know how people will react to this story.
- 38:48Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by I find it inspiring, you know, and
- 38:51Speaker 1: I really appreciate what you said about mental illness not
- 38:56Speaker 1: negating somebody's value or their worth in the world. And
- 38:59Speaker 1: Chris there, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you
- 39:02Speaker 1: on this show this week. Thanks for coming back after
- 39:05Speaker 1: the first episode. I thought you might be done.
- 39:07Speaker 3: No no, I stuck around this week, but yeah, if
- 39:10Speaker 3: you'll have me back, I'll happily be back. I do
- 39:13Speaker 3: want to mention one more thing about dictionaries just in general.
- 39:16Speaker 3: I think they're super cool, you know, and we talk
- 39:18Speaker 3: about these things that just sort of exist. But the
- 39:20Speaker 3: very first dictionary that we had in the English language
- 39:23Speaker 3: was put together in the sixteen hundreds, and it was
- 39:27Speaker 3: a product of cultural mixing. It was a product of
- 39:31Speaker 3: the Renaissance. It was a product of English incorporating so
- 39:36Speaker 3: many words from other languages, from French, from Latin, from Greek,
- 39:40Speaker 3: and from Hebrew. The first dictionary was really just a
- 39:44Speaker 3: guide to what at the time were weird words or
- 39:47Speaker 3: like a difficult one. So the very first dictionary is
- 39:50Speaker 3: back in the sixteenth and seventeenth century CE. They weren't comprehensive.
- 39:54Speaker 3: It was just like, Okay, everybody knows the words we use.
- 39:58Speaker 3: Here's a description of the hard ones.
- 40:01Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 40:02Speaker 3: And I want to hear from some of the ridiculous
- 40:04Speaker 3: historians out there. Maybe you guys can comment on the
- 40:06Speaker 3: Facebook page because when I was growing up, when I
- 40:10Speaker 3: was using dictionaries, I always had that one friend who
- 40:13Speaker 3: would use the dictionary too to learn how to spell
- 40:17Speaker 3: a word, which always seemed crazy to me, because how
- 40:20Speaker 3: do you look up a word if you don't know
- 40:23Speaker 3: how to spell the word already. But I know, I know,
- 40:25Speaker 3: I'm not the only one who knows someone like that.
- 40:27Speaker 3: I think even in like in the in the Miracle Worker, right,
- 40:30Speaker 3: maybe someone in there uses the dictionary as a spelling guide.
- 40:35Speaker 3: But maybe maybe Keller herself. I don't know, but I
- 40:40Speaker 3: know I'm not the only one out there who's experienced this.
- 40:42Speaker 3: Does anyone out there do that? Or do you just
- 40:44Speaker 3: use it to define things? I've always used it to
- 40:46Speaker 3: define things.
- 40:47Speaker 1: I've used it to define things. I guess you could.
- 40:49Speaker 1: You could use it to find the spelling word by
- 40:51Speaker 1: attempting to go through stumble through it. You've got to
- 40:54Speaker 1: getically yeah, get a guess pre autocorrect. So it's a
- 40:58Speaker 1: real pain man trying to look up words in English
- 41:02Speaker 1: Demander and Dictionary, just because of the different you know,
- 41:05Speaker 1: the idiograms versus the it's a whole thing. Yeah. So
- 41:12Speaker 1: I also want to add a request to ridiculous historians.
- 41:17Speaker 1: When this episode comes out, could you visit us on
- 41:20Speaker 1: our Facebook page and let us know some of your
- 41:23Speaker 1: favorite obscure words. We are enamored with strange, unusual and
- 41:30Speaker 1: anachronistic words, and it's no secret that the English language
- 41:34Speaker 1: is chock full of them. You know what I mean?
- 41:37Speaker 1: Do you have an obscure word that you like? Oh gosh,
- 41:39Speaker 1: I've been stuck in your head recently.
- 41:41Speaker 3: You know. One of the nice things about working here
- 41:43Speaker 3: at How Stuff Works is you get to dive into
- 41:45Speaker 3: all sorts of weird stuff. And I did write a
- 41:49Speaker 3: piece for the website a year or so ago on
- 41:53Speaker 3: archaic insults, on words that we're insulting a while ago
- 41:58Speaker 3: and that today have fallen out of fashion. And I
- 42:01Speaker 3: think that was kind of brought to light by UH
- 42:03Speaker 3: by the time, our our president and the leader of
- 42:06Speaker 3: a certain nation on the Korean peninsula, where trading barbs
- 42:10Speaker 3: back and forth and U and people were like, what's
- 42:13Speaker 3: a dotard? And so so we decided to investigate not
- 42:19Speaker 3: only that, but a bunch of other words like slumgullion. Yeah,
- 42:24Speaker 3: I'm drawing a blankets.
- 42:25Speaker 1: The other hedge's probably one.
- 42:27Speaker 3: Perhaps perhaps perhaps, but anyway, I mean all of this,
- 42:31Speaker 3: it just amounts to words, words. Words. We can post
- 42:34Speaker 3: a link on the on the Facebook page rights Historians.
- 42:38Speaker 3: I'll post a link to that article. You guys can
- 42:40Speaker 3: inform yourselves. And that does it for me. I mean,
- 42:43Speaker 3: unless you need anything else from me.
- 42:45Speaker 1: No comet hang out. Let's go, let's go, let's go
- 42:48Speaker 1: hit the scene. And as we said, our trustee co
- 42:51Speaker 1: host Nol is out adventuring. But Christopher, you mentioned that
- 42:56Speaker 1: you're hoping he's just directly behind somebody.
- 42:59Speaker 3: Wait he should I turn Nol?
- 43:02Speaker 1: Hey, Noel, how's it going?
- 43:03Speaker 2: Well, Hey, you guys, It's it's me Nol. I'm in
- 43:07Speaker 2: Los Angeles, in the in the in my hotel room
- 43:10Speaker 2: in the Hollywood Roosevelt, which apparently is where Marilyn Monroe died.
- 43:16Speaker 2: I've been watching the Haunting of Hill House alone in
- 43:20Speaker 2: this creepy hotel by myself at night. I think I'm
- 43:23Speaker 2: still kind of on East Coast brain haven't quite made
- 43:25Speaker 2: the switch yet, so I've been feeling like I've been
- 43:27Speaker 2: seeing some apparitions hovering around this really bougie canopy bed
- 43:33Speaker 2: that I'm that I'm in laying in right now, in fact,
- 43:35Speaker 2: podcasting to you find people. I'm really glad that Christopher
- 43:39Speaker 2: was able to sit in and talk about the Oxford
- 43:42Speaker 2: English Dictionary.
- 43:43Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
- 43:44Speaker 2: Sorry if I sounded a little out of it, I've
- 43:46Speaker 2: been I've been working late nights and getting up early,
- 43:48Speaker 2: and as far as I'm concerned, I don't even.
- 43:50Speaker 3: Know what time it is right now.
- 43:52Speaker 2: But godspeed ridiculous historians to you and yours and Christopher
- 43:56Speaker 2: and Ben, and I'll see you on the flip side
- 43:59Speaker 2: if I return and don't get murdered by ghosts in
- 44:02Speaker 2: the night.
- 44:03Speaker 1: And that's it for today. Christopher. I hope that you
- 44:06Speaker 1: make this a habit. I hope you return to shed
- 44:10Speaker 1: some more light on some of these strange stories of
- 44:13Speaker 1: human civilization. And I let you off easy this time, pal,
- 44:17Speaker 1: but next time I'd love to hear some more weird
- 44:20Speaker 1: cover songs.
- 44:22Speaker 3: Ben, I can do it for you. Hey, Thanks Ben,
- 44:24Speaker 3: Thanks Noel, Thanks Casey, you guys listening out there. Thanks,
- 44:29Speaker 3: thanks for having.
- 44:29Speaker 1: Me, and we'll see you again next week.
- 44:37Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
- 44:41Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.