Lexicographer fascinated by the many different registers of language, who hunted down the origins of the expression 'OK'.
The researches of the lexicographer Allen Walker Read often produced controversial results, but he was widely respected and dealt with all manner of questions about words in an engaging scholarly spirit. He had an impressive breadth of knowledge, and particularly liked to build bridges between Britain and the United States.
As one of the forerunners of 'dictionary research' (or 'metalexicography'), he spoke at conferences with authority, modesty, and wit about competing lexicographic traditions or so-called 'dictionary wars'. He was exceedingly curious about words--where they come from (etymology), what they mean (semantics), how they are formed (lexicology), how they are treated in dictionaries (lexicography), how they relate to place names (onomastics), and how they vary from one social and regional variety to another (sociolinguistics and dialectology). More than that, he wanted to know how people use words in real situations for various purposes: to amuse themselves (graffiti), to be technical or informal (jargon and slang), to offend (taboo), and to mollify (euphemism).
The vocabulary he investigated included expressions such as the almighty dollar, words such as blizzard, and names such as Dixie, Rocky Mountains, and Podunk. Most famously of all, he traced OK back to The Boston Morning Post of 1839, at a time when there was a fad for abbreviations, much as there is today, but preferably rather facetious. OK stood for “orl korrect”.
Born in 1906 in Winnebago, MN, Allen Walker Read
studied at two universities in Iowa, at U MO, at Oxford (as a Rhodes scholar,
1928-31), and at U Chicago, where William Craigie invited him to assist with
the Dictionary of American English between 1932 and 1938. A Guggenheim
fellowship then allowed Read to work at the British Museum in London (1938-41),
where he started a Dictionary of Briticisms. During the Second World War he
was asked to compile a dictionary of military terms and to do linguistic research
for the Army.
From 1945 until his retirement in 1974, Read held a chair at Columbia U. There
he could take a critical stance on usage and dictionaries, defending what he
thought was good (such as Philip Gove’s edition of Webster’s
Third New International Dictionary, 1961), but also showing up shoddy
workmanship in some other compilations.
Read published more than 300 papers, 26 of which were collected in America: Naming the country and its people (2001) and a further 20 in Milestones in the history of English in America (2002). He also edited the journal American Speech, contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and acted as a consultant to a number of American dictionaries, such as Funk & Wagnall’s, the American College Dictionary, and Random House. His incomplete Dictionary of Briticisms is being completed and prepared for publication by John Algeo.
Read was a founding member (and later president) of the Dictionary Society of North America, president of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States, president of the American Dialect Society and president of the New York Society of General Semantics. Among the numerous honors conferred upon him was an honorary doctorate from Oxford.
Allen Walker Read married Charlotte Schuchardt in 1953. She died in July [2002].
Allen Walker Read, linguist and lexicographer, was born on June 2, 1906. He died on October 16, 2002, aged 96. [London Times, 8 November 2002]
For ages Missourians have debated whether they reside in 'Missour-ee' or 'Missour-uh'. For most, it is good fun. But for U MO-Columbia professor Donald Lance, it was a passion--a passion that grew out of a lifelong love of words and an admiration for the beauty of language. As a professor of linguistics, Dr. Lance devoted endless hours to studying things such as dialects, place names, and phonetics. He was fascinated by how words worked and why people used them the way they did. When it came to the 'Missour-ee/Missouri-uh' debate, Dr. Lance was less interested in which was RIGHT than in discovering how the pronunciations evolved and what they meant for the people who used them. "Donald was possibly the only person who really understood the issue," said Adam Davis, vice president of the Missouri Folklore Society. Dr. Lance began studying and publishing articles on the topic in 1985 and since then has become known as one of issue's top experts. In August 2002, he traveled to a conference in Sweden to speak about it, and as recently as [October 2002], he was featured in an Associated Press story about the state's pronunciation. He had been putting the final touches on what many thought was the definitive article on the topic, Davis said. Dr. Lance loved to drive, and in retirement he began taking to the road for months at a time, traveling all over the United States. Two of his favorite places were Texas, where he spent most of the first 38 years of his life, and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He would mix business with pleasure, traveling the road alone but meeting up with friends or attending conferences with colleagues along the way. And always leaving time to listen. He had a humble integrity that came through reverence for language. They said he loved many people and many things. But perhaps most of all he loved what connected them all: words. And it is through words that Donald Lance will be remembered.
Dr. Lance graduated from Texas A&M University in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in English education. He served with the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant in Korea from 1952 to 1954. He went on to earn a doctoral degree in English and linguistics in 1968 from the University of Texas-Austin. Dr. Lance joined the faculty of the University of Missouri in 1969. He was a charter member of the re-activated Missouri Folklore Society, where he served as president and secretary and was on the board of directors. He was a member of the American Dialect Society and served as regional secretary from 1976-82 and as chairman of the teaching committee from 1982-1991. He was also a member of the Board of Managers of the American Name Society, a member of the Mid-America Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and of the Trail of Tears Organization. [Aaron Kessler et al]