Question

根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

You may think that English dictionaries have been used for many, many centuries. The spelling of English has always been a problem. 1. Then people could spell words in different ways which you might find interesting. But it made reading English much more difficult. So dictionaries were invented to encourage everybody to spell the same. In fact, an English dictionary like the kind you use today wasn’t made until the time of the late Qing Dynasty. 2. They are Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, and James Murray. These men spent nearly all of their lives trying to collect words for their dictionaries. For them, it was not only a job; it was a wonderful journey of discovery. The largest dictionary in the world is the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED for short.

3. At the age of fourteen, he left his village school in Scotland and taught himself while working in a bank. Later he became a great teacher. After Oxford gave him the job, Murray had a small house built in the garden behind his house to do his work. Part of it was one meter underground. 4. He had to wear a heavy coat and put his feet in a box to keep warm. Every morning, Murray got out of bed at five o’clock and worked several hours before breakfast. 5. Murray hoped to finish the new dictionary in ten years. But after five years, he was still adding words for the letter A! Forty-four years later, in 1928, other editors finished the dictionary.

A. In winter it felt like a barn.

B. Murray had never been to college.

C. He worked on the dictionary until he was very old.

D. Often he would work by candle light into the evening.

E. But it was more of a problem in the days before a dictionary.

F. Three men did most of the important early work on dictionaries.

G. The idea of this dictionary came from an important meeting in Britain in 1857.

Answer 1