Opinion: The man who put Brisbane on the map (or dictionary, at least)

Wally Lewis has a statue in Paddington. Why not eccentric local figure Chris Collier, asks Michael Madigan.

The Wally Lewis statue at Suncorp Stadium

Here’s a fun fact: The Courier Mail has contributed more words to the Oxford English Dictionary than not only the great 20th Century poet T.S. Eliot, but the Church of England’s 400-year-old “Book of Common Prayer’’.

When you say “paceway’’ as in a racecourse for trotters, or “snaky’’ as in angry, “petrol head’’ for car enthusiast or even “sickie’’ for having a day off work, the source of all – at least for the Oxford English Dictionary – was The Courier-Mail.

There are so many contributions to the dictionary from this newspaper, the number even eclipses the contributions of acclaimed novelist Virginia Wolfe and the offerings of the daughter of Karl Marx who, despite being enthusiastic about the creation of new words, was reportedly “close to useless’’ at the task.

This strange and utterly intriguing story of The Courier-Mail’s connection to the most recognised dictionary in the world is contained in the book The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary’ by Sarah Ogilvie.

The book details the extraordinary life of “lexicographical superhero” Chris Collier, who lived alone in French St in Brisbane’s Paddington, wandered the suburb nude late at night, and collected old movie posters.

Chris also cut out words from The Courier-Mail, glued them to bits of paper, wrapped them in old corn flake packets and dispatched thousands of them to the Oxford English Dictionary for consideration.

The upshot of his work – which crossed several decades and only really ended with his death in 2010 – is that this newspaper is only 317 places behind the Holy Bible, famed as the word of God, as the most frequently quoted source in a dictionary, which has drawn on more than two million sources.

Dear old Chris’s eccentricities made him famous at the dictionary’s head office in England. We know this because Ogilvie – who worked for the dictionary both here and in England – said the first thing the crew there asked when she arrived for her first day at work was: “Do you know Mr Collier?’’

Literal wordsmiths have enjoyed a cult-like fame among the initiated ever since the philologist James Murray took over the dictionary in 1879 and began outsourcing the job of word creation to the entire world.

The world was so thrilled to participate the Royal Mail had to install a post box in front of James’ house to handle the mail while the business of word creation attracted quite a few out-of-left-field personalities, many of them, as Ogilvie points out, eccentrics residing at the “edges of academia’’.

One was William Chester Minor, a former American army surgeon who was hugely talented at truffling out new words but spent a considerable amount of time in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for murder.

As for Chris, Ogilvie met him in Brisbane in 2006 and offered an Oxford English Dictionary-funded flight to meet them all at head office (he politely refused, reasoning it would rob him of many days reading The Courier-Mail).

Ogilvie then tried to start a process to get him an Order of Australia, but he died before it could happen.

She recalls him as someone who was decidedly odd and a naturist who liked to walk around with no clothes on, but there is nothing to suggest he was in any way criminal or even considered a neighbourhood pest

Over 35 years, he sent 100,000 suggestions to the OED – making The Courier-Mail the 319th-most referenced source in the history of the dictionary.

Shakespeare comes in first, the Bible second, and Charles Dickens 11th.

By giving us more tools to interpret the world around us, Chris earned a place in history along with Chaucer and Milton as architects of a language now the most commonly spoken in the entire world.

Wally Lewis has a statue in Paddington. Why not Chris?