Skeat, Walter William, 1835-1912, English scholar and philologist.

Skeat took holy orders in

1860, but illness cut short his church career. At Cambridge he served as a lecturer in
mathematics (1864-71), began the study of Old English, and was professor of Anglo-Saxon
(1878-1912). In 1873 he founded the English Dialect Society, which brought about the English
Dialect Dictionary, edited by Joseph Wright (1896-1905). Skeat was the author of a number of
textbooks, contributed freely to learned journals, and led the way in the study of English place
names. Among the many works he edited are Lancelot of the Laik (1865), Piers Plowman
(1867-85), John Barbour's The Bruce (4 parts, 1870-89), lfric's Lives of Saints (2 parts, 18811900), and a seven-volume edition of Chaucer (1894-97). His important work, An
Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1882), was a standard reference for many
years.

Walter William Skeat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter William Skeat (21 November 1835 1912), English philologist, was born in
London on the 21st of November 1835, and educated at King's College School
(Wimbledon), Highgate School, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a
fellow in July 1860.[1] The noted palaeographer T. C. Skeat was his grandson.

Contents
[hide]

1 Life
2 Work

3 References
4 External links

[edit] Life
In 1878 he was elected Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at
Cambridge. He completed Mitchell Kemble's edition of the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, and
did much other work both in Anglo-Saxon and in Gothic, but is perhaps most generally
known for his labours in Middle English, and for his standard editions of Chaucer and
Langland's Piers Plowman.
As he himself generously declared, he was at first mainly guided in the study of
Chaucer by Henry Bradshaw, with whom he was to have participated in the edition of
Chaucer planned in 1870 by the University of Oxford, having declined in Bradshaw's
favour an offer of the editorship made to himself. Bradshaw's perseverance was not
equal to his genius, and the scheme came to nothing for the time, but was eventually
resumed and carried into effect by Skeat in an edition of six volumes (1894), a
supplementary volume of Chaucerian Pieces being published in 1897. He also issued an
edition of Chaucer in one volume for general readers, and a separate edition of his
Treatise on the Astrolabe, with a learned commentary.
His edition of Piers Plowman in three parallel texts was published in 1886; and, besides
the Treatise on the Astrolabe, he edited numerous books for the Early English Text
Society, including the Bruce of John Barbour, Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, the
romances of Havelok the Dane and William of Palerne, and lfric's Lives of the Saints
(4 vols.). For the Scottish Text Society he edited The Kingis Quair, usually ascribed to
James I of Scotland, and he published an edition (2 vols., 1871) of Chatterton, with an
investigation of the sources of the obsolete words employed by him.
He is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.

[edit] Work
In pure philology, Skeat's principal achievement is his Etymological English Dictionary
(4 parts, 1879-1882; rev, and enlarged, 1910). While preparing the dictionary he wrote
hundreds of short articles on word origins for the London-based journal Notes and
Queries.
His other works include:

Specimens of English from 1394 to 1597 (1871)

Specimens of Early English from 1298 to 1393 (1872), in conjunction with
Richard Morris
Principles of English Etymology (2 series, 1887 and 1891)
A Concise Dictionary of Middle English (1888), in conjunction with A. L.
Mayhew
A Student's Pastime (1896), a volume of essays
The Chaucer Canon (1900)

A Primer of Classical and English Philology (1905)

"A Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words" (1914) with A.L. Mayhew