Peter Gilliver Explained

Peter Gilliver
Birth Date:	14 June 1964
Birth Place:	Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, England
Occupation:	Lexicographer
Nationality:	British

Peter Gilliver (born 14 June 1964) is a lexicographer and associate editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Career

Gilliver's parents were both linguists. He attended Barnard Castle School, and has a degree in Mathematics from Jesus College, Cambridge,^[1] and a qualification in Information Science from Liverpool.

As of 2013, he was responsible for the largest three or four entries in the then-current electronic revision, including the then largest (that for "run", which took him over 9 months and has 645 meanings for the verb form alone).

In 2016 Gilliver published a history of the OED,^[2] which took most of the previous decade to write.

He and his partner sing in various choirs, including the Oxford Bach Choir (which they came to administer by 2021), and Fiori Musicali.^[3]

Credits

Television

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Title	Role	Production	Date
Balderdash and Piffle	OED Panel	BBC	2006–2007
University Challenge The Professionals	OUP Captain	BBC	12 July & 6 September 2004
Imagine: An A-Z of the OED	OED Historian	BBC	18 December 2003

Publications

• Book: Gilliver, Peter . At the Wordface: J. R. R. Tolkien's work on the Oxford English Dictionary . Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, 1992 . Patricia . Reynolds . Milton Keynes . . 1995 . 173–186 . 1-887726-04-7 . none .
• Book: Gilliver, Peter . 2000 . Appendix II: OED personalia . Mugglestone . Lynda . Lexicography and the Oxford English Dictionary: pioneers in the untrodden forest . Oxford University Press . Oxford . 232–52 . 0-19-925195-9 . —————. none .
• Peter . Gilliver . That brownest of brown studies: the work of the editors and in-house staff of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1903 . Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America . 44–64 . 25 . 2004 . 0197-6745 . —————. none .
• Gilliver . Peter . 2006 . Billy Sunday: a new source for "oxen of the sun" . University of Tulsa . James Joyce Quarterly . 133 . 44 . 1 . 10.1353/jjq.2007.0010 . 144575793 . —————. none .
• Book: Gilliver . Peter . Jeremy . Marshall . Edmund . Weiner . 2006 . . Oxford University Press . Oxford . 978-0199568369 . —————. none .
• Book: Gilliver, Peter . The Great Un- Crisis: An Unknown Episode in the History of the OED . 2007 . Words and Dictionaries from the British Isles in Historical Perspective . Considine . John . 166–177 . Cambridge Scholars Publishing . Newcastle . 978-1-84718-168-8 . —————. none .
• Web site: Gilliver . Peter . Breaking the code . Oxford English Dictionary . 2016 . 28 October 2016 . —————. none .
• Book: Gilliver, Peter . 2016 . The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary . Oxford . Oxford University Press . 9780199283620 . —————. none .

See also

• Oxford English Dictionary
• John Simpson (lexicographer)
• Edmund Weiner

External links

• (video) 14th stop: Newcastle: A different English accent - a discussion on regional accents (and whether they get into the OED) [2019-11-17: link no longer functional; archived version substituted (2023-12-3 that now no longer functional either)]
  • Icons article on Peter Gilliver [no longer links to relevant content, as of 2013 - but link is now to archived version, so OK]

Notes and References

1. The New York Times Magazine, 5 November 2006
2. A history of the OED, OED News, March 2005
3. Web site: Home . fiori-musicali.com.