Former Oxford dictionary editor secretly deleted Indian words

London: A former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary tried to rewrite the dictionary by deleting thousands of words with foreign roots, a new book claims.

Deleted words include "balisaur", a badger-like animal from India, "Danchi", a Bengali plant and "boviander", the name in British Guyana for a person of mixed race living on the river banks, the Daily Mail reported Tuesday.

The OED is now re-examining words removed by Robert Burchfield who edited the respected dictionary during the 1970s and `80s and who died in 2004 aged 81.

Burchfield has long been considered the editor who opened up the English dictionary to the wider world, until now, according to the Mail.

Sarah Ogilvie, also a former OED editor, in her new book "Words of the World" reveals how Burchfield started a rumour that his earlier editors of the OED were inward-looking anglocentrics, when in fact the opposite was true and it was Burchfield himself who was deleting foreign words.

IANS