She set out to analyze the omissions. By examining a random sample of 10 percent of the words in the four-volume Burchfield supplement and comparing those entries with those in the 1933 supplement, she concluded that Dr. Burchfield deleted 17 percent of words that she broadly categorized as borrowed from regional dialects of English or coming from another language. Among his favorite targets were American words that had crept into the dictionary, like frog-pond and seed-cake, and other foreign-sounding words like danchi (Bengali for a tropical shrub) and boviander (from British Guiana for people of mixed race who live on river banks).

Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large for the OED, said Dr. Ogilvie’s comments were being taken out of context, and that Dr. Burchfield was being unfairly besmirched. He said Dr. Burchfied “did not delete anything.”

“What Burchfield did was create an entirely new supplement in four very large volumes,” Mr. Sheidlower said in an interview. “He included most of the material in the 1933 version, but not everything. He felt that some words were so esoteric that ‘they don’t have to be in my supplement.’ That is what editors do.”

That said, Mr. Sheidlower added, the 1933 entries not included in the four supplements did not vanish. “Those words are still there, and they are being added to OED3 online.” Among the restorations so far, he said, were automobilize (American usage) and aberglaube (German, for a belief in things beyond the certain and verifiable).

In a telephone interview Dr. Ogilvie took a seemingly softer stance toward Mr. Burchfield than she does in her book. “It is important not to attribute mendacity to Burchfield,” she said, “but rather to give the early editors recognition for their contribution toward making the OED a truly global text. This is a good-news story about the early OED editors more than it is a bad-news story about Burchfield.”