Walter William Skeat

Walter William Skeat 1835-1912, English scholar and philologist. Skeat took holy orders in 1860, but illness cut short his church career. At Cambridge he served as a lecturer in mathematics (1864-71), began the study of Old English, and was professor of Anglo-Saxon (1878-1912). In 1873 he founded the English Dialect Society, which brought about the English Dialect Dictionary, edited by Joseph Wright (1896-1905). Skeat was the author of a number of textbooks, contributed freely to learned journals, and led the way in the study of English place names. Among the many works he edited are Lancelot of the Laik (1865), Piers Plowman (1867-85), John Barbour's The Bruce (4 parts, 1870-89), Ælfric's Lives of Saints (2 parts, 1881-1900), and a seven-volume edition of Chaucer (1894-97). His important work, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1882), was a standard reference for many years.

Skeat, W. W. ( Walter William Skeat) (1835–1912), was appointed to the chair of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge in 1878. His edition of Lancelot of the Laik was one of the first publications of the Early English Text Society (no. 6, 1865). He edited Ælfric, Barbour's Bruce, Chatterton, and the Anglo-Saxon Gospels; his greatest works were the editions of Langland's Piers Plowman (1886) setting out in parallel the three manuscript versions, the existence of which was Skeat's discovery, and of Chaucer (7 vols, 1894–7). He founded the English Dialect Society in 1873, which led to the appearance of Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (1896–1905), and his own Etymological Dictionary (1879–82, revised and enlarged 1910) was begun with the object of collecting material for the New English Dictionary (See Murray, J. A. H.). He also began the systematic study of place-names in English.