Dictionary editor’s deletions defended
CLAIMS that a New Zealand former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary covertly deleted words that were foreignsounding were bogus, a historian says.
An article in The Guardian newspaper about a book to be published by lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie claimed Whanganui-born Robert Burchfield covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins and then blamed previous editors when people realised words had gone missing. Mr Burchfield died in 2004. But an article published in yesterday’s New Yorker cited lexicography historian Charlotte Brewer as saying the real reason that certain words were missing was ‘‘far less nefarious’’.
‘‘James Murray, the dictionary’s first editor, made an early editorial decision that the OED would not include any proper nouns – this was regarded as the province of the encyclopedia, not the dictionary – and that words formed from proper nouns would likewise be ex- cluded,’’ said.
It was then that words such as African were excluded from the ‘‘A section’’ of the dictionary.
Jesse Sheidlower, who wrote the article, said Brewer’s research showed the poorly made policy was quickly overturned while work on the A section was being continued so words such as American were still able to be added.
It wasn’t until 49 years later in 1933, when an edition entitled The Oxford English Dictionary: Being a Corrected Reissue with an Introduction, Supplement, and Bibliography of a New English Dictionary on Historical Principles was published that the errors were corrected.
The book is now referred to as the 1933 supplement, and when Burchfield took over the editorship, he had the task of incorporating parts of it into the Ox-
the
article ford English Dictionary’s second edition.
He was not tasked with rewriting the supplement, and this was where Ogilvie had become confused, Sheidlower said.
Burchfield had to produce a onevolume update of the dictionary in seven years. It ended up taking four volumes over 29 years.
Working with limited space, words inevitably had to be cut, Brewer said.
In her own book, Brewer wrote that Burchfield accepted most if not all submissions from the supplement, but Burchfield himself wrote in the preface of the dictionary that the few that were missing were edited out because they weren’t considered useful words.
The omitted words fell into several categories.
Words included abactinally, abolitional, automobilize, and botryogen.
Although some happened to be foreign-sounding words, it ‘‘did not mean Burchfield was hostile toward these words’’, Sheidlower wrote.
‘‘He did not delete them, he simply edited them.’’