Help the OED Find a Lost Book

New submitter imlepid writes "The Oxford English Dictionary is currently undergoing a complete overhaul which includes a reexamination of the 300,000+ entries and citations for those entries. Understandably for a work which is over 150 years old, some of the sources have become hard to find. One such example is a book titled 'Meanderings of Memory' by Nightlark, which is cited 49 times in the OED, including for some rare words. The OED's editorial team has appealed to the public, 'Have you seen a copy of this book?'"

Comments

I've met a work witch

[Anonymous Coward]

Their work ethic is wicked.

How silly.

[Aerokii]

When your work witch is over 150 years old, you'll definitely want an overhaul.

Or retirement.

Re:How silly.

[wagnerrp]

Or you know... burn it. It's the only way to be sure.

Did they check the filing cabinet?

[Anonymous Coward]

"But Mr Dent, Meanderings of Memory has been available in the local library for the last nine months."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see it, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."

"But the book was on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find it."

"That's the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the book didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

Irony?

[ubrgeek]

They can't remember where they left the 'Meanderings of Memory' book?

Does it even really exist?

[JDG1980]

What if "Meanderings of Memory" never existed in the first place, but was made up by sloppy 19th-century OED editors when they couldn't find a real source? It's not as if this practice is unknown...

Re:Does it even really exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

check the comments under the OED blog - there's a link to a catalog on google books which lists it

Re:Does it even really exist?

[tgd]

What if "Meanderings of Memory" never existed in the first place, but was made up by sloppy 19th-century OED editors when they couldn't find a real source? It's not as if this practice is unknown...

Maybe its like the fake roads that cartographers put into maps... anyone else who references it clearly copied the OED!

Re:Does it even really exist?

[MobyDisk]

You almost got it right: The OED itself is the copy! The creates of the OED must have stolen information from some other, older source, who put fake references in to detect it. The OED is a fraud!

Re:Does it even really exist?

[Spiridios]

check the comments under the OED blog - there's a link to a catalog on google books which lists it

Would that I could mod you up. Here's the catalog. It's entirely possible that it's also made up, but seems less likely.

Re: Does it even really exist?

[forkazoo]

Well, if you had to cite a source, but all you had was your own recollection that you had heard the word, 'Meanderings of Memory' is pretty much the perfect name for it. It's even possible that within the community of people working on it, it was a well understood practice. Like giving a directing credit to Alan Smithee for a film. (For a guy who never existed, he sure was prolific!)

Re:Does it even really exist?

[dwye]

Of course, by your logic, there are also numerous copies of The Necronomicon, as well as at least two of the Al Asif (the Arabic, untranslated source of The Necronomicon) in various libraries. Just to extend the joke, most have been borrowed by a member of the Whateley family and are years overdue. I also understand that librarians have added a few copies of The King In Yellow (the mythical play, not the collection of stories about it) around the country. In a few years, expect to see works by Nickolaus Flamel (sp?) start showing up, as Harry Potter fans get in charge of things.

Librarians with too much time on there hands leave all sorts of in-jokes around.

I'll Check

[HtR]

Let me check. It might be sitting on my desk.

Umm - this might take a couple of hours ...

No help for the OED until they change pricing

[lsommerer]

I would love to use the OED occasionally and wouldn't mind paying to do so, but who can afford to spend $295 per year for a subscription?

I have to assume that they are not all idiots and that they actually have some subscribers at that price point, but I can't imagine that that model makes the most money possible. I want to look up maybe one word a month, and I would be willing to pay to do so, but I can't pay $295 a year (or even $29.95 per month).

Re:No help for the OED until they change pricing

[Anubis IV]

A word being used once or twice in a body of literature might indicate that the word was in use around the area where the author worked and may have even been a common term at that time and place. The word may no longer be useful to us in everyday speech, but it may be useful if someone were to read the works of others from around that time and place who happened to use the word in personal journals or the like that historians are later trying to make sense of.

Re:No help for the OED until they change pricing

[synaptik]

If a word is used only once [...] is it really a word?

Yes... it is a hapax legomenon.

Re:No help for the OED until they change pricing

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

The unabridged OED is pretty much just for libraries and research institutions.

This is true, though a lot of people have access to the OED through a local library and don't know it. Lots of urban public libraries also subscribe to it, as do a decent number of library consortia, and these often allow you to use it online from home. And of course many, maybe most, academic libraries have access to it. I'm a Chicagoan and can use it online through a link at the Chicago Public Library's home page (once I provide my library card number, of course). It's a great resource to have available.

It's not just a matter of price, previous to them coming up with an online edition, the books took up like 3m of shelf space.

They used to print a two-volume Compact Edition, with the print reduced to a tiny size and a magnifying glass included. You can find the 1970s compact reprint of the 1933 OED in a lot of bookstores for not too much money -- mine cost ~$40 in about 1998. The print on the compact version is tiny, but into my late 30s I could read it unaided if I was in good light. Now I depend on the magnifying glass, but it's still useful and fun to browse.

The older edition isn't current, obviously, but it's still useful in sussing out the odd meanings that a common word had in 1638, or finding a word that was last used by Ben Jonson or in a charter issued during the reign of Henry VII. That's really the strength of the OED. There are much simpler sources for finding out what a word means today, but if you have any sort of historical or antiquarian interest in the language then you need to OED.

'Meanderings of Memory' by Nightlark

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

A famous literary hoax, of Borgesian dimensions.

One might adduce as much, from the enigmatic title of the purported work, and the pseudonymous attribution of authorship.

In fact, this was the product of several Oxford dons, in the generation before Tolkien - who expanded on the academic chicanery of spurious reference work by creating an entire cosmos, populated with libraries of such.

Now, let us turn to the Voynich manuscript, and the Dictionary of the Khazars...

Re:'Meanderings of Memory' by Nightlark

[maxwell demon]

IN BEFORE APK

Yes, of course, now I see it. They should just remove the line

meanderings-of-memory.book 127.0.0.1

from their hosts file, then they'll find the book.

Translation of the Latin phrase

[x_man]

For those wanting to know what the Latin phrase underneath translates to:

Cur potius lacrimae tibi mi Philomela placebant?
Why do tears please you more, My Philomela?

From Wikipedia: Philomela or Philomel (Ancient Greek: ) is a minor figure in Greek mythology and is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary, artistic, and musical works in the Western canon.

Re:Translation of the Latin phrase

[chad_r]

Someone had an interesting comment in the New Yorker article:

I see that you refer to "Philomena" in your comment rather than the "Philomela" of the text. St. Philomena was a virgin martyr whose times and story are roughly contemporaneous to the composition of the book. Possibly there is some connection to the "revirginization" quotes within the lost text. In addition, the tears may refer to the liquid reputed to have sprung from Philomena's statue in Italy in the 19th century...

Also, there is more than one reference on the net. There is a Flickr image from a Sotheby's auction in 1854, which was just uploaded yesterday.

I'm not bringing it back ...

[PPH]

.... to the library unless someone gives me a break on 150 years of late fees.

Re:Victorian Gay Curiosa?

[O-Deka-K]

And here's the rest:

"Oh freddled gruntbuggly"
"thy micturations are to me"
"As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee"
"Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes"
"And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles"
"Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"

Re:Could Be Worse

[dwye]

Countless number of books lost forever when the Library of Alexandria was burnt down.

Which time?