The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a remarkable achievement by hundreds of ordinary and extraordinary men and women, whose stories have until now remained untold. Simon Winchester illuminates this diverse cast of characters for the first time, uniting original research and evidence from the Oxford University Press archives with gripping narrative flair. The Meaning of Everything is rich with captivating detail: how the word aardvark narrowly missed inclusion after being deemed too 'scientific' and too 'foreign', which editor of the Dictionary became the inspiration for Kenneth Grahame's Ratty in the Wind in the Willows, why Tolkien found it so difficult to define walrus, and how the word bondmaid was missed out of the first edition simply because the piece of paper on which it was written had fallen behind a pile of books.

With his characteristic gift for storytelling, Simon Winchester brings one of the most fascinating of forgotten stories to life.