Tom McArthur (linguist)


Tom McArthur was a Scottish linguist, lexicographer, and the founding editor of English Today.
Among the many books he wrote and edited, he is best known for the Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English, the first thematic monolingual learner's dictionary, which complemented the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English by bringing together sets of words with related meanings, Worlds of Reference, as well as the Oxford Guide to World English.
McArthur's most notable work was The Oxford Companion to the English Language, a 1200-page work with 95 contributors and 70 consultants, which was hailed by the Guardian newspaper as a "leviathan of accessible scholarship" and was listed on the Sunday Times bestseller list. He published an abridged edition in 1996 and a concise edition in 1998. A second edition was published in 2018, co-edited with Jacqueline Lam McArthur and Lise Fontaine.
McArthur also taught at the University of Exeter's Dictionary Research Centre, which was established in 1984 by Reinhard Hartmann. In addition, he published books about Indian philosophy and the Bhagavad Gita.
McArthur died aged 81 on 30 March 2020.

Appointments

1979-1983: Professor of English, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada
2001: Chinese University of Hong Kong, Lingnan University, Xiamen University