Joyce Mary Hawkins (1928–1992) was a lexicographer and the editor of a number of

dictionaries A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, p ...

. Joyce Hawkins studied

classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

St Hugh's College, Oxford St Hugh's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. It is located on a site on St Margaret's Road, to the north of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth as a women's college, and accepte ...

. Hawkins initially worked on a

Patristic Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...

dictionary, published in 1961 by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

(OUP). She then worked on the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...

Supplement. In this role, she read most of the works of P. G. Wodehouse for quotations. Later she was sole editor or joint editor of many OUP dictionaries, working on these until her retirement in 1991. She also appeared briefly in "Dictionary Corner" on the British television game show ''

Countdown A countdown is a sequence of backward counting to indicate the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur. NASA commonly employs the terms "L-minus" and "T-minus" during the preparation for and anticipation of a rocket launch, and eve ...

''. Hawkins edited the following dictionaries, published by

(some posthumously): * ''The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary'', with Jessie Coulson, et al., 1975 * ''The Oxford Minidictionary'', 1981 * ''The St Michael Oxford Dictionary'', 1981 * ''The Oxford Senior Dictionary'', 1982 * ''The Oxford Paperback Dictionary'', 1988 * ''The Oxford Reference Dictionary'', 1989 * ''The Oxford Study Dictionary'', 1994 * ''The Oxford Large Print Dictionary'', 1995 * ''The Oxford Popular Dictionary & Thesaurus, with Sara Hawker, 1995 * ''The Oxford School Dictionary'', 1996 * ''The Oxford Popular Dictionary'', 1998 * ''The Oxford Pocket School Dictionary'', with Andrew Delahunty, et al., 2000 * ''The Oxford Popular English Dictionary'', with Lucinda Coventry, et al., 2000 * ''Oxford School Dictionary'', with Robert Allen, Andrew Delahunty, et al., 2002 * ''Oxford Concise School Dictionary'', with Andrew Delahunty, et al., 2003 Hawkins died in 1992.

References

1928 births 1992 deaths Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford 20th-century lexicographers English lexicographers English book editors Oxford University Press people Women lexicographers {{UK-bio-stub