The Oxford English dictionary (OED) is often considered the ultimate guide when discussing whether or not a word is part of the English language. It’s seen as an impartial and professional collection of every word, but however the OED has presented enormous bias since its very first edition.
Work on the first edition of the OED began in the late Victorian era. This is important because during this time period there was a boom in the pornography industry, prostitution, contraception, as well as human sexuality. Overall, many people were beginning to discuss and invent products for sexual health and wellness that were unheard of on such a societal scale. This caused a clash between those who were more progressive and people who were highly conservative.
James Murray was one of the first people to work on the OED in the mid to late 1800s. He wanted to create an unbiased collection of words no matter their meaning or social connotation. However, Murray also believed that it was “God’s will” for him to create the OED and this intensely religious viewpoint would compromise the neutrality of his ideal dictionary. Additionally, the Oxford University press, where the first OED was printed, had status as a Bible press. That meant that many compromises needed to be made on what words were added and how their definitions were phrased in order for the university to save face.
Three glaringly biased definitions within the first edition of the OED are:
- Masturbation: to practice self-abuse
- Tribade: A woman who practices unnatural vice with other women
- Prostitute: Of women: The offering of the body to indiscriminate lewdness for hire.
Many people became angry when they saw that the OED was going to include such partial definitions and became angrier when words were excluded entirely. Especially when it came down to curse words. One man even condemned the authors by saying “it is no task of the maker of [a dictionary] to select the good words of a language. If he fancies that it is so, and begins to pick and choose … he will at once go astray.” Others countered to this by saying that if curse words and other taboo words were included that the OED would be a “…dirty, filthy book and the test of it is that no human being would allow that book on his table, no decently educated English husband would allow even his wife to have it.”
The debate over a word’s inclusion in the OED is part of why the first edition of the OED took so long to make; between its beginning and end of production were 70 years. That means that people were born, raised, grew up, had kids, had grandkids, retired, and probably even passed, during the production of just this one book.