From Fresh Air from WHYY, on NPR
When Words Were Worth Fighting Over
by Geoff Nunberg
I have a quibble with the title of David Skinner's new book, The Story of Ain't. In fact, that pariah contraction plays only a supporting role in the story. The book is really an account of one of the oddest episodes in American cultural history, the brouhaha over the appearance of Merriam-Webster's Third International Dictionary in 1961.
At 2,700 pages, Webster's Third was literally a monumental work of scholarship. It was the first American unabridged dictionary in 25 years, and the first to make use of the findings of modern linguistics. But critics pilloried it for what they considered an overly permissive approach to usage. They singled it out for its apparent failure to condemn "ain't," which it noted was used by many cultivated speakers. But they also attacked it for admitting colloquial items like "litterbug" and "wise up," and for illustrating some of its definitions with quotations from down-market authorities like Ethel Merman and Betty Grable....