Famous Lexicographers: The People Behind Our Dictionaries

Why Dictionary Makers Deserve Attention

Open a dictionary, and the words can seem as if they have arranged themselves: meanings sorted, pronunciations checked, histories traced, examples chosen. Of course, none of that happens by accident. Every entry is the result of human judgment, and often of years of reading, comparing, revising, and arguing over evidence.

The people who do this work are lexicographers. Their names are not always as familiar as the authors whose words they quote, but their influence is enormous. They decide how words are recorded, how usage is described, and how readers find their way through a language. The history of dictionaries is therefore also a history of patient editors, bold scholars, collectors, reformers, and teams of specialists who changed how people understand English and many other languages.

The First Builders of Dictionary Tradition

Long before the large national dictionaries of the 1700s and 1800s, earlier compilers created the habits and formats later lexicographers would refine. In English, Robert Cawdrey issued A Table Alphabeticall in 1604. It is generally regarded as the first monolingual English dictionary. The book contained roughly 2,500 difficult words with short explanations, and Cawdrey, a schoolteacher, aimed it at “Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons” who might meet unfamiliar terms while reading.

Nathaniel Bailey pushed English dictionary making toward broader coverage with his Universal Etymological English Dictionary of 1721. Unlike many earlier wordbooks, it did not restrict itself to rare or learned vocabulary; it also included everyday words. Henry Cockeram had earlier published English Dictionarie in 1623, the first English work to put the word “dictionary” in the title. Bailey’s work became the dominant English dictionary for much of the 18th century and supplied important material for Samuel Johnson’s later project.

Early Work Outside English

Dictionary making was never only an English story. In 1612, the Accademia della Crusca produced the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, the first major Italian dictionary. The Académie française began preparing its French dictionary in 1635, with the first edition appearing in 1694. Chinese scholarship had already produced the Erya, dating from the 3rd century BCE and counted among the oldest surviving dictionaries. Arabic lexicography also developed strongly during the Islamic Golden Age, with figures such as al-Khalil ibn Ahmad (718–786 CE) and his student al-Farahidi associated with pioneering Arabic dictionaries. These examples gave later English lexicographers models, warnings, and ambitions to build on.

Samuel Johnson and His Defining Work (1709–1784)

Samuel Johnson remains the best-known dictionary maker in English. His A Dictionary of the English Language appeared in 1755 after nine years of labor. It became a landmark reference and shaped English dictionaries for more than a hundred years. Johnson did, with limited help, a task that the Académie française had approached through an official committee.

The dictionary mattered because of both size and style. It contained about 42,773 entries, but its real distinction lay in the intelligence of the definitions. Johnson wrote with accuracy, bite, humor, and literary force. His definition of “lexicographer” as “a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words” shows his dry self-mockery. His entry for “oats” called it “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people,” a famously sharp remark at Scotland’s expense.

Johnson also gave English lexicography one of its central methods: he supported meanings with quotations from literature. Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and other writers supplied evidence of how words were actually used. That practice helped move dictionaries away from bare lists of meanings and toward documented accounts of language in context. For a fuller treatment, see our article on Samuel Johnson's Dictionary.

Noah Webster and the Shape of American English (1758–1843)

Noah Webster did for American English what Johnson had done for British English, though with a more openly national purpose. His An American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, was both a scholarly work and a statement of cultural independence. Webster believed the United States needed a dictionary that reflected its own speech, spellings, institutions, and values.

He worked on the dictionary for more than twenty years and studied 26 languages while investigating word origins. Many of his etymologies have since been revised, but his influence on spelling has lasted. Webster helped fix American preferences such as “color” over “colour,” “center” over “centre,” and “honor” over “honour.” He argued that these spellings were simpler and more consistent with pronunciation, and they became part of the visible difference between American and British written English.

Webster’s dictionary listed around 70,000 entries, far exceeding Johnson’s total, and it included many terms tied to American life and government. After Webster died, George and Charles Merriam bought the publishing rights, laying the foundation for the Merriam-Webster name that remains central to American dictionary publishing. Our article on Noah Webster's Dictionary gives more detail on his career and influence.

James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary (1837–1915)

Sir James Augustus Henry Murray is the figure most strongly linked with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), one of the largest and most ambitious dictionary projects ever attempted. Murray, a self-taught Scottish schoolmaster from modest circumstances, became editor in 1879. He gave the next 36 years to the work and died before the dictionary was completed in 1928.

Murray’s plan was enormous: record every English word from its earliest known appearance to current use, and show each stage of development through dated quotations. To collect the evidence, he managed a huge volunteer reading program. Contributors across the world sent in millions of citation slips. The most famous of them was Dr. William Chester Minor, an American Civil War veteran held in a British asylum for the criminally insane. Simon Winchester later told that story in The Professor and the Madman.

Murray worked with a small editorial staff in the now-famous Scriptorium, a corrugated iron shed in his Oxford garden. There they sorted slips, checked evidence, and built entries with exceptional care. His method combined historical range with philological exactness, and it helped establish the standards that still guide the OED.

Émile Littré and the Great French Dictionary (1801–1881)

Émile Littré occupies in French lexicography a place similar to James Murray’s in English. His Dictionnaire de la langue française appeared in four volumes from 1863 to 1872, followed by a supplement in 1877. It remains one of the major achievements of French dictionary making and is still useful to scholars.

Littré brought unusually broad learning to the task. He was a physician, philosopher, political figure, classical scholar, and man of letters. Like Johnson and Murray, he believed definitions should be supported by quotations, and he drew heavily from French writing from the 16th through the 19th centuries. The dictionary is especially respected for showing how French meanings changed over time. Updated editions of the Littré continue to be published, and the work remains an important companion to the dictionary of the Académie française.

The Grimm Brothers as Dictionary Scholars

Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) are famous for collecting fairy tales, but their grandest scholarly undertaking was the Deutsches Wörterbuch, or German Dictionary, begun in 1838. Their interest grew out of comparative and historical linguistics. Jacob’s “Grimm’s Law,” which describes regular sound changes between Germanic and other Indo-European languages, remains a basic principle in historical linguistics.

The project’s size was immense. Jacob and Wilhelm worked on the dictionary for the rest of their lives, but they advanced only to “F” and “D,” respectively. Later generations of German scholars carried the work forward, and it was not finished until 1961, 123 years after it began. A revised and enlarged edition is still in progress. The Deutsches Wörterbuch shows both the Grimms’ scholarly ambition and the almost unbelievable patience required by large historical dictionaries.

Dictionary Makers in the Modern Era

Lexicography did not stop with the great print dictionaries. In the 20th and 21st centuries, editors and theorists have carried the discipline into corpus research, world English, and online publication while preserving its evidence-based habits.

Robert Burchfield, Editor of the OED Supplement (1923–2004)

Robert Burchfield, born in New Zealand, edited the four-volume Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, published between 1972 and 1986. The supplement added tens of thousands of new words and meanings, including scientific terms, colloquial expressions, and vocabulary from varieties of English around the world. His broad view of English helped move the OED from a mainly British reference work toward a more global one.

Sidney Landau, Theorist and Practitioner (1933–2017)

Sidney Landau combined hands-on dictionary work with serious analysis of the field. His Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, first published in 1984 and revised in 2001, became the standard introduction for students, editors, and readers curious about how dictionaries are made. Few books have explained the daily decisions of lexicography so clearly.

John Simpson, OED Chief Editor (b. 1953)

John Simpson served as chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1993 to 2013. During that period, he directed the huge job of revising the whole OED for its third edition. The work involved rewriting entries with modern corpus evidence and updated etymological research. Under Simpson, the OED also became a strongly digital publication, with online quarterly updates that made it easier for readers to use.

Erin McKean and Digital Lexicography (b. 1971)

Erin McKean belongs to a generation of dictionary makers who combine traditional editorial skill with the possibilities of the web. She edited the New Oxford American Dictionary and later founded Wordnik, an online dictionary built around a large collection of web-based citations. McKean has argued for more open, flexible, and inclusive dictionary making in the internet age.

Women Who Shaped Lexicography

For much of its history, lexicography was publicly dominated by men, but women’s work was essential and has often been under-credited. The early OED depended heavily on women volunteers who read books and sent in thousands of citation slips. Editors such as Eleanor Nichol-Adams also made substantial contributions to the dictionary’s content without receiving broad public recognition.

Women gained more visible editorial roles in the 20th century. Madeline Kripke (1943–2020), though not a working lexicographer in the usual sense, became the world’s leading collector of dictionaries. She gathered more than 20,000 volumes, preserving rare and significant works for later researchers. After her death, Indiana University acquired the collection, making it a major archive for the study of dictionary history.

Women now hold senior editorial positions at major dictionary publishers around the world, and the profession is more diverse than it has ever been. Groups such as the Dictionary Society of North America and the European Association for Lexicography support wider participation and inclusion in the field.

What Lexicographers Have Left Us

The lexicographers discussed here, along with many others whose names are less widely known, created more than convenient reference books. They influenced spelling, recorded usage, preserved older vocabulary, traced meaning through time, and made language easier to study and use. Through etymological research, they connect modern speakers with the past; through new entries and revised senses, they record the language as it changes.

Fast answers are easy to find now, and machine-generated text is everywhere. That makes careful dictionary work even more valuable, not less. Lexicographers test claims against evidence, sort competing meanings, and explain words with discipline and clarity. As long as people keep speaking, reading, writing, and inventing new expressions, we will need skilled people to organize that evidence for everyone.