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Christian Janet Kay (April 4, 1940 - May 28, 2016) was Emeritus Professor of English Language and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in English Language at the University of Glasgow. She was co-editor with scholar Michael Samuels, for the world's largest and first historical dictionary Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED), a project she dedicated 40 years to (1969 - 2009).

Kay also founded the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech and published work on historical semantics and lexicography, and contributed metaphor and semantic annotation based projects on the Historical Thesaurus of English dataset.

Early life
Kay was educated at Mary Erskine’s School in Edinburgh. She completed a MA in English Language and Literature at the University of Edinburgh, before continuing on to Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA.

After this Kay took on English language teaching in Sweden, as well as professional lexicography.

Professional Career
Kay first arrived a the University of Glasgow as a research assistant. At the age of 27, she became one of four co-editors.

In 1989, when Professor Samuels retired, Kay became Director of the HTOED project.

Of her career, Professor Kay is quoted as having said, "“I never intended to be an academic. I worked in journalism, English-language teaching and publishing before becoming a research assistant and then a lecturer at Glasgow. The common thread is an interest in language.”"Recognised as an efficient and effective academic leader, and an ambitious, yet selfless scholar - over the course of her career, Kay had under her employ in 233 researchers and production staff.

In 1995 Kay and Jane Roberts published A Thesaurus of Old English.

Then in 1996 Kay was promoted to Professor.

Kay was the original conveyor of the Scottish Language Dictionaries (SLD), which was formed in 2002.

Retiring in 2005, then Professor of English Language, Kay remained active in the facilitation and research in Thesaurus-derived projects. She continued to actively support the completion of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary which was published on the 22 October 2009.

Kay is credited to have created the first computer laboratory for English studies in the world, developing cutting-edge teaching software, and first of its kind research-led courses in literary and linguistic computing.

In 2013, the University of Glasgow awarded her Professor Kay an honorary D.Litt. for her outstanding contribution service to the study of the English language.

Kay's work on Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
The result of 44 years of work, the HTOED received critical acclaim and was awarded the Saltire Society Research Book of the Year Award in 2009. In review by The New York Times, the commentator noted,"'historians, sociologists, philosophers and literary critics will soon wonder how they got by for so long without it... indispensable.”"Randolph Quirk, Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London reported,"'Fortyfive years of exacting scholarship by a well-led team have had a triumphal outcome. This book is a magnificent achievement of quite extraordinary value. It is perhaps the single most significant tool ever devised for investigating semantic, social, and intellectual history.'"An overwhelming success, the HTOED has generated significant royalties allowing for a legacy of funding for postgraduate studentships continuing research into the linguistics of English and of Scots.

Death
At age 76 Kay passed away, never married. She is survived by her sister and brother.

The Christian Kay Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Undergraduate Research into Modern English Language and Linguistics was set up in the Professor's memory.

As were her wishes, Professor Kay did not request a funeral.

Publications
• Roberts, Jane and Christian Kay with Lynne Grundy. 1995. A Thesaurus of Old English. (=King's College London Medieval Studies XI.) Second edition, 2000. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 9789042015630

• Kay, Christian. 2000. `Historical semantics and historical lexicography: will the twain ever meet?', in Lexicology, Semantics and Lexicography in English Historical Linguistics: Selected Papers from the Fourth G.L. Brook Symposium, ed. by Julie Coleman and Christian Kay. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 53-68. ISBN 9781556199721

• Kay, Christian J. and Irené A. W. Wotherspoon. 2002. `Turning the dictionary inside out: some issues in the compilation of a historical thesaurus', in A Changing World of Words: Studies in English historical semantics and lexis, ed. by Javier E. Diaz Vera. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 109-135. ISBN 9789042013308

• O'Hare, Cerwyss. 2004. `Folk Classification in the HTE Plants Category', in Kay and Smith, eds, 179-191. in Categorization in the History of English, ed. by Christian Kay and Jeremy Smith. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 59-69. ISBN 9781588116192

• Kay, Christian and Irené Wotherspoon. 2005. 'Semantic relationships in the Historical Thesaurus of English'. Lexicographica 21 (Specia), 47-57. ISSN 0175-6206

• Kay, Christian. 2011.Developing the Historical Thesaurus of the OED', in Current Methods in Historical Semantics, ed. by Kathryn Allan and Justyna Robinson. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 41-58. ISBN: 9783110252903

Key grants since 1993
• Kay, Smith and Horobin, `Lexical Searches for the Arts and Humanities': AHRB ICT Strategy Fund (2005-6) £67,176

• Kay, `Historical Thesaurus of English: the Final Stages': Arts and Humanities Research Board/Council (2000-3) £266,403

• Kay, `The Historical Thesaurus of English': Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland (1998) £30,000

• Kay, `Historical Thesaurus of English: the Final Phase': Leverhulme Trust (1994/97) £160,410