Monday, November 26, 2012

Abattoir, svelte, bamboo

At the Guardian, Alison Flood on Sarah Ogilvie's scandalous revelations about OED deletions (via Liz Denlinger):
Examples of Burchfield's deleted words include balisaur, an Indian badger-like animal; the American English wake-up, a golden-winged woodpecker; boviander, the name in British Guyana for a person of mixed race living on the river banks; and danchi, a Bengali shrub. The OED is now re-evaluating words expunged by Burchfield, who died in 2004, aged 81.

"This is really shocking. If a word gets into the OED, it never leaves. If it becomes obsolete, we put a dagger beside it, but it never leaves," Ogilvie said.

No comments:

Post a Comment