By Joe Marren

Assistant professor/Buffalo State College

Define polymath.

Stuck? OK, how about sesquipedalian?

Still having problems? All right, then, try this: What’s the origin of bedlam?

Tough questions, right? So why not turn to the Oxford English Dictionary for the answers – the 22,000-page, multi-volume, 500,000-word behemoth that would take several football linemen to carry into anyone’s home or office.

Simon Winchester’s 1998 book, "The Professor and the Madman" (HarperCollins Publishers), tells one of the stories – likely the quirkiest – behind the 70-year effort to produce the masterpiece on the English language. It is, as Winchester subtitles his book, "A tale of murder, insanity and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary."

American expatriate Dr. William C. Minor is the insane murderer in question who played a large role in the making of the "big dictionary." Although there is no hard evidence that Minor provided those specific definitions for the words used above, Winchester does delight in detailing Minor’s thousands of contributions to the project. In fact, that is the heart of Winchester’s book and thus its strength. The twist of literary mystery and scholarship has a plot worthy of Sherlock Holmes while also providing side trips to the realms of psychiatry, lexicography and etymology. But not all of those side trips are worth the ride because it is in some of the subplots – for instance, in later chapters when Winchester speculates on Minor’s sexual frustrations, and in some opening passages that wonder what drove Minor to murder – that the book suffers.

Professor James Murray spent most of his life – more than 40 years – heading a team of professionals and volunteers strung across the British Empire in researching, writing and editing the volumes. He would not live to see it finished, but he did get to meet the paranoid physician-turned murderer who churned out entries from his special cells at England’s Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. And from that meeting, based on Minor’s dictionary contributions, a warm friendship grew.

A bit of history is needed here to understand and appreciate the project and Winchester’s book: Dr. Minor was an American physician who may or may not have been pushed over the edge of mental stability by what he saw in the Civil War, or so Winchester postulates. Minor moved to London after the war and it was there that he murdered George Merrett, a British brewery worker, one still-dark early morning in 1872. Minor spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor.

On a parallel track was Murray, who took over the "big dictionary" project in 1879 (it had begun in 1857 and had progressed in fits and starts since then but wouldn’t be finished until 1927 – long after the deaths of Minor and Murray). Shortly after he took over, Murray sent out a call for volunteers to supply the editors with words and then with quotations from literature that used those same words.

Perhaps equally compelling but not as detailed is the story of how Winchester got access to secret government files that had been locked up for about a century. The research and effort seems to have been a labor of love and the proof is in the pages of the book. Winchester, a journalist who divides his time between Massachusetts and Scotland, has also written about 12 other books. He brings all his reporter’s expertise to tell this story and keep it as compelling as a Victorian whodunit.

Incidentally, to save you time and arm strain from trying to lift the volumes of the OED:

A polymath is "a person of much or varied learning; one acquainted with various subjects of study."

Sesquipedalian is an adjective that means "words and expressions (after Horace’s sesquipedalia verba ‘words a foot and a half long’) … of many syllables."

And the origin of bedlam? "The Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, used as an asylum for the reception and cure of mentally deranged persons; originally situated in Bishopsgate, in 1676 rebuilt near London Wall, and in 1815 transferred to Lambeth. Jack or Tom o’Bedlam; a madman."

Joe Marren is an assistant professor in the communications department at Buffalo State College. He had spent 18 years in newspaper journalism, 11 as an editor. More information about him is available at www.joemarren.com If you visit the site, be sure to say "awww" at the pic of his daughter.