Murray, Sir James

Murray, Sir James (Augustus Henry)

(born Feb. 7, 1837, Denholm, Roxburghshire, Scot.—died July 26, 1915, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Eng.) Scottish lexicographer. He taught in a grammar school (1855–85). His Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland (1873) and a major article on English for Encyclopædia Britannica (1878) established him as a leading philologist. He was hired by the Philological Society as editor of the vast New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, later called the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1879, and he applied himself to the work with legendary energy and resourcefulness. The first volume appeared in 1884, and by his death he had completed about half the dictionary.