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.