John Simpson

John Simpson joined the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary in the summer of 1976 after studying English Literature at the University of York and Medieval Studies at the University of Reading.

He was appointed by Robert Burchfield to work on the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary and subsequently became Co-Editor of the Second Edition of the Dictionary, which was published to widespread acclaim in 1989. He was appointed Chief Editor in 1993.

John was born and educated in Cheltenham. When he joined the Dictionary, he entered a world which was organized around the painstaking manual analysis of millions of index cards, each one containing evidence of linguistic usage, much as in Murray's day.

As Chief Editor, he now presides over the world's largest dictionary programme, in which the traditional techniques of analysis and definition are supported by complex computer systems which assist in the editing of the text of the Dictionary and in the collection and processing of the raw materials on which entries are based. The scope of the work has expanded from the addition of modern vocabulary in the Supplement to the comprehensive documentation of English throughout its history: a return to Murray's vision transformed by the processing power of the computer.

John's other interests include some which are more resistant to computerization, such as village cricket. He is a member of the English Faculty at Oxford and of the Philological Society (where the idea of the Dictionary was first mooted in the 1850s), and a Fellow of Kellogg College. He is a world expert on proverbs and slang, and has edited dictionaries on both these subjects for Oxford University Press; he regularly lectures and broadcasts on the English language and on the Dictionary.