You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language, and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Burnett.

If you've ever played tennis, you know that after a while, the net will start to sag. And at that point you have to go over to one end and turn a crank

to make it taught again. Now that crank was invented by a Yorkshireman named Robert Charles Hope.

He came up with this device in the late 19th century

at a time when the popularity of lawn tennis

had begun to surge in England.

For example, the first Wimbledon tournament was in 1877.

Now you may wonder, why am I telling you all this on a show about language?

Well, Robert Charles Hope was not just passionate about

tennis, he was also passionate about words. And he's one of many members of

the public who responded to a call from the Oxford English Dictionary to send in citations

for notable words that they encountered in their reading.

And it was Robert Charles Hope who provided the OED with its first citation for the word

filching meaning pilfering. And he also sent in the first citation for the verb to jaunt,

meaning to make a horse prance up and down.

And I learned about him in a fantastic new book by linguist and lexicographer Sarah Ogilvy.

It's called the dictionary people, the Unsung Heroes who created the Oxford English

Dictionary. And I'm very excited about it. That was just a preview because I want to talk about

it later in the show too.

This is tonally different than Simon Winchester's,

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