Robert William BurchfieldCNZM,CBE (27 January 1923 – 5 July 2004) was alexicographer, scholar, and writer, who edited theOxford English Dictionary for thirty years to 1986, and was chief editor from 1971.
Born inWhanganui,New Zealand, he studied atWanganui Technical College andVictoria University inWellington. After war service in theRoyal Regiment of New Zealand Artillery, he graduated MA from Wellington in 1948 and won aRhodes Scholarship toMagdalen College,Oxford University, in England, where he was tutored byC. S. Lewis. He became a Fellow of Magdalen and lecturer in English straight after graduating (1952–53), subsequently moving colleges toChrist Church (1953–57) andSt Peter's (1955–79). ThroughC. T. Onions, the Magdalen librarian, Burchfield assisted in editing one of Onions's projects, theOxford Dictionary of English Etymology. His preparation of an edition of theOrmulum was supervised byJ. R. R. Tolkien.[1]
Onions recommended him toDan Davin as editor of the secondSupplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, on which he worked from 1957 to 1986. He re-established the network of volunteer readers sending in records of words that had helped to create the original OED but had been allowed to fall away.[1] In 2004, it emerged that Burchfield's second supplement had removed a large number of words that were present in the earlier 1933 supplement edited by Onions and William Craigie, which Burchfield's second supplement incorporated.[2] Four years later the full nature of his treatment of foreign words was shown: he deleted 17 per cent of the foreignloan words and words from regional forms of English; and his coverage was not as extensive as his predecessors, especially Onions, who included 45 per cent more loanwords andWorld Englishes.[3] In 2012, a book documented Burchfield's work and showed that many of the omitted words hadonly a single recorded usage, but their removal ran against both what was thought to be the established OED editorial practice and a perception that he had opened up the dictionary to "World English".[4][5][6] The author of the book concerned,Sarah Ogilvie, complained that people were unfairly judging Burchfield and that her coverage had been misleadingly reported in the media.[7][8]
Burchfield also participated in a 1980sBBC committee that monitored compliance with the broadcaster's policy of usingreceived pronunciation in newscasting, before that policy was abandoned in 1989 in favor of "using announcers and newsreaders with a more representative range of accents."[9]
In 1994 theHamburg-basedAlfred Toepfer Foundation awarded Burchfield its annualShakespeare Prize in recognition of his life's work.
In retirement, he produced a controversial new edition, substantially rewritten and lessprescriptivist, ofFowler's Modern English Usage, the long-establishedstyle guide byHenry Watson Fowler.
He lived for many years inSutton Courtenay,[10] and died inAbingdon-on-Thames at 81, in 2004. He married twice and had three children.[1]
