 His first civilian job after World War I was at the "Oxford English Dictionary", where he worked mainly on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter "W".In 1920, he took up a post as reader in English language at the University of Leeds, becoming the youngest professor there.While at Leeds, he produced "A Middle English Vocabulary" and a definitive edition of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" with E. V. Gordon; both became academic standard works for several decades.