Walter William Skeat - Work

Work

In pure philology, Skeat's principal achievement is his Etymological English Dictionary (4 parts, 1879-1882; rev, and enlarged, 1910). While preparing the dictionary he wrote hundreds of short articles on word origins for the London-based journal Notes and Queries. Skeat was also a pioneer of place-name studies.

His other works include:

  • The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions (1871)
  • Specimens of English from 1394 to 1597 (1871)
  • Specimens of Early English from 1298 to 1393 (1872), in conjunction with Richard Morris
  • Principles of English Etymology (2 series, 1887 and 1891)
  • A Concise Dictionary of Middle English (1888), in conjunction with A. L. Mayhew
  • A Student's Pastime (1896), a volume of essays
  • The Chaucer Canon (1900)
  • A Primer of Classical and English Philology (1905)
  • "A Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words" (1914) with A. L. Mayhew
  • The place-names of Cambridgeshire (1901)
  • Place-names of Huntingdonshire (1902)
  • Place-names of Hertfordshire (1904)
  • Place-names of Bedfordshire (1906)
  • Place-names of Berkshire (1911)
  • Place-names of Suffolk (1913)


Somewhat incidentally in the perspective of his main body of work, Skeat coined the term ghost word and was a leading expert in this treacherous and difficult subject.

Read more about this topic:  Walter William Skeat

Famous quotes containing the word work:

    “Sleep, beloved, such a sleep
    As did that wild Tristram know
    When, the potion’s work being done,
    Roe could run or doe could leap
    Under oak and beechen bough,
    Roe could leap or doe could run....”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    “Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship.”
    —Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)

    “The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance—due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author’s attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful—and possibly the only—help that can be given.”
    —Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)