Peter Gilliver | |
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Born | Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, England | 14 June 1964
Occupation | Lexicographer |
Nationality | British |
Peter Gilliver (born 14 June 1964) is a lexicographer and associate editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
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]
Gilliver, a longtime editor who also seems to be the OED's resident historian, points out that the dictionary feels obliged to include words that many would regard simply as misspellings. No one is particularly proud of the new entry as of December 2003 for nucular, a word not associated with high standards of diction. "I was amazed to find that the spelling n-u-c-u-l-a-r has decades of history," Gilliver says. "And that is not to be confused with the quite different word, nucular, meaning 'of or relating to a nucule.'"
— "Cyber-neologoliferation", James Gleick, The New York Times, November 5, 2006
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 |