Angus McIntosh

Angus Mcintosh, (10 January 1914 – 25 October 2005) was a British linguist and academic, specialising in historical linguistics.

McIntosh was born in 1914 near Sunderland, England, to Scottish parents. He was educated locally, at Ryhope Grammar School, and studied English at Oriel College, Oxford. He then studied comparative philology at Merton College, Oxford, and was a Commonwealth Fellow at Harvard University. He served in the British Army during the Second World War, including working in intelligence at Bletchley Park.

Having taught at University College, Swansea, before the war, he moved to the University of Oxford after being demobbed. Only two years later, in 1948, he moved to the University of Edinburgh as its first Forbes Professor of English Language and General Linguistics. He remained at Edinburgh until retirement, and then served as director of the Middle English Dialect Atlas Project from 1979 to 1986. He was an honorary research fellow at the University of Glasgow until his death in 2005.

Early life and education McIntosh was born on 10 January 1914 near Sunderland, England, to Scottish parents. He was educated at Ryhope Grammar School, a state grammar school in Ryhope, County Durham. Having received a state scholarship, he studied English language and literature at Oriel College, Oxford. He graduated with a first class honours Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1934: as per tradition, his BA was promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Oxon) degree in 1938. On 20 January 1941, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps. He was promoted to war substantive lieutenant and temporary captain on 1 June 1941. As an intelligence officer, he worked at Bletchley Park's Station X. His research interests included philology and historical linguistics relating to both Middle English and Scots. In retirement, he was Professor Emeritus at Edinburgh and an honorary research fellow at the University of Glasgow. Also in 1989, the British Academy awarded him the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize, an award given to scholars of early English language and literature, English philology, or the history of English language.

Upon retirement from the University of Edinburgh, McIntosh had the unusual distinction of being presented with two Festschrifts. The other was titled Language Form and Linguistic Variation: papers dedicated to Angus McIntosh. The Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh is named in his honour.

Selected works