Sir James Murray, right, and his editorial team work on the Oxford English Dictionary in the central workroom known as the Scriptorium. From “The Dictionary People,” by Sarah Ogilvie ...

Thursday was Wolvercote Cemetery and the resting place of my hero James Murray, the longest-serving Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 up to his death in 1915.

In July 1915 an ailing James Murray (pictured), one of the early editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), defined one final word. He had dedicated 36 years to the dictionary; his toil had ...

Martin Fone, who has long been fascinated by words, digs in to the story of how Sir James Murray created the first Oxford English Dictionary — despite having a full-time job and 11 children — and ...

An expert in music and mathematics and an authority on English phonology, he had been contacted by the editor James Murray to assist with compiling what would become the Oxford English Dictionary.

When James Murray took command in 1879, the Oxford English Dictionary could best be defined by the word disarray.

The story of the OED’s most prolific contributor, a sex-addicted murderer who lived in an insane asylum.

Dr. James Murray, a philologist, took the helm as the dictionary’s principal editor in 1879 and remained in that position for the rest of his life (he died in 1915).

Last summer, a team of linguists and lexicographers from Oxford and researchers from Harvard began a new project, the Oxford Dictionary of African American English.

It is James Murray’s dictionary — first produced in 125 unbound volumes between 1884 and 1928 — that has earned global recognition as the most authoritative guide to the English language.

Sarah Ogilvie’s sprightly “The Dictionary People” pays tribute to the explorers, suffragists, murderers and ordinary citizens who helped create the Oxford English Dictionary.