Court in controversy: a lexicographer's brush with the law

Among the tasks which a lexicographer is very occasionally called upon to perform, one of the more peculiar is to give evidence in court as an expert witness. My own adventure of this kind took place (some years ago) when the OED was contacted by a firm of lawyers involved in a trade description case.

If an enquirer writes to the OED in connection with a legal argument, our most typical response is a regretful refusal to comment, on the grounds that we claim no authority in matters of law or legal interpretation. The courts do use our dictionaries in support of arguments about the commonly accepted meanings of words, but the legal authority comes from the court's decision, not from the dictionary's definition. Nevertheless, it is sometimes necessary to explain what the complete OED does and does not contain, and how long ago some parts of it were written. On this occasion, unfortunately, a letter of explanation was insufficient, and I found myself in the position of having to give testimony in person to a magistrates' court in Croydon, to explain why the OED entry for foil (published in 1897) might not be adequate in seeking to resolve a late 20th-century argument about ‘foil-wrapped’ tea bags, and to present some of the sources of information which a modern dictionary editor might use in revising such an entry.

But perhaps it was not unfortunate. The day was a fascinating introduction to the civil court system: the interplay of solicitor, barrister, magistrate, and clerk; the mental dexterity of the barristers in fashioning and refashioning their arguments; the attention to the meanings of words in the kind of detail that is second nature to the lexicographer. Of course, I had to steel myself for the grim and gruelling realities of the trip: the drive to Croydon in a hired car (rather more comfortable than my old Morris, actually), the unfamiliar surroundings of the hotel swimming pool and jacuzzi (well, maybe I could get used to this), the long four-course dinner in the company of an entertaining barrister... and the case went to appeal, so I had to do it all over again a few months later!

The most interesting aspect of the whole trip, from the lexicographer's point of view, was the opportunity to stay in the Selsdon Park Hotel, an institution whose name is immortalized in the pages of the OED as the source of ‘Selsdon Man’. This hypothetical hominid was not dug in fragments out of the geological deposits on the hotel's extensive grounds, but sprang fully-formed from the lips of Labour prime minister Harold Wilson. He used the term (in some scorn) with reference to a conference of the Conservative Party leadership at the hotel in early 1970. A picture of the conference participants is prominently displayed in the hotel: in retrospect, the one who was to become most notable in later British politics was perhaps the solitary ‘Selsdon Woman’, the upwardly-mobile Margaret Thatcher. But that is another story...