Arthur T. Maling

Arthur Thomas Maling was born in the Hertfordshire town of Royston in 1858, the son of a corn and seed merchant. He studied at Cambridge University, graduating with a B.A. in 1883. In 1886 he was taken on by James Murray, the first Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, as one of his assistants; he continued to work on the Dictionary for the next thirty years, transferring to Charles Onions’s staff after Murray died in 1915 (Onions was the fourth of the Dictionary’s Editors). Like most of the OED’s assistants, he worked on whatever words were given to him to tackle, but he did have special areas of expertise, including mathematics, natural sciences, and music. He also had a particular flair for what are sometimes called “function words” like the, that, and of, which pose particular challenges for the lexicographer. He retired from Dictionary work in 1928, for health reasons; later that year he was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University in recognition of his work on the OED.

Maling published a translation of five speeches by Henry Drummond, under the title Kvin Paroladoj, in 1935. In hymnody he is represented by his Esperanto translation of James Montgomery's "God is my strong salvation", which has appeared in several hymnals.

The precise date, place and cause of his death is not known.

Maling is the subject of an article by Peter Gilliver, "The Interests of Arthur Maling: Esperanto, Chocolate, and Biplanes in Braille" (OED News 2:xxxii[2005] 2–4)

(Based for the most part on personal communication from Peter Gilliver, Associate Editor, Oxford English Dictionary)