Language Scholar

A language scholar and part of the team who created the award winning Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Connection to the University of Glasgow: Lecturer

Discover more Language scholars on the University of Glasgow Story website

Achievements

The following achievement is associated with Jane Roberts:

Creating the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
The Historical Thesaurus is the first ever produced for any language in the world, containing almost every word in English from Old English to the present day.

Biography

Jane Roberts is an Honorary Research Fellow on the Deaprtment of English Language. She was a lecturer in the Department of English Language and contributed to the Historical Thesaurus of English project. The project presents the vocabulary of English from Old English to the present day. Words are arranged according to their meanings and dates of use allowing users to explore connections between words. It is based on the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and was completed and published in two volumes in 2009.

Roberts was educated at the universities of Dublin and Oxford. She is currently Emeritus Professor, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of English Studies, at the University of London. Her main interest is in the history of the English language, especially lexical semantics and medieval vernacular manuscripts.