Covert action at the Oxford English Dictionary

You may have missed it. There’s been a lot going on this holiday season. But news has emerged of foul play at one of the English speaking world’s most hallowed institutions: The Oxford English Dictionary. Linguist Sarah Ogilvie charges in a new book that Dr. Robert Burchfield, former OED chief editor, covertly deleted thousands of words that had foreign origins.

Words that Dr. Burchfield reportedly expunged included many American English words including wake-up (a woodpecker), frog-pond, and seed-cake. Linguists are frantically working to restore the disappeared words in time for the release of the new online OED. Words in line for resurrection include aberglaube (German, a belief in things that cannot be scientifically be proved) and automobilize, an American word that must have something to do with stirring up the passions of motorists.

Deleting words from the OED, considered the bible of the English language, was strictly against policy and raises serious questions about Dr. Burchfield’s motivations. It turns out that previous editors going all the way back to James Murray in the 19th century had taken quite a bit of heat for including contributions from correspondents all over the world. The first OED in 1884 included words like aard-vark, aard-wolf, acacia, and alouatte, a howling monkey from South America.

So it is ironic that Dr. Burchfield managed to cultivate a reputation for inclusiveness while he was secretly culling the herd. Ms. Ogilvie reports that “actually it was the earlier editors who were sensitive to cultural differences and put in thousands of words from different varieties of English at a time when colonial varieties of English were just emerging.”

Dr. Burchfield is perhaps best known for adding words that were common on the street to the OED including swear words and a variety of words that invoked the power of male and female genitalia.

Word has it that English has by far the most words of any language. This obviously relates to the openness of our linguistic borders. Imagine if we had a stick up our butts like the French had with their Academy. Like a gated community, we might feel a bit safer but we would be the poorer for it.