In the late summer of 1961, the publishers G. & C. Merriam issued the third edition of Webster's New International Dictionary. Ten years in the making and weighing more than 13 pounds, it contained 100,000 new words and definitions not in the 1934 second edition (ranging from A-Bomb, astronaut and beatnik to loyalty oath, sit-in and Zen) that captured just how much the world had changed in a quarter-century. Oh, and by the way, certain words would now be looked upon more kindly. The word ain't, for example, deemed "illit." (for illiterate) in Webster's Second, became "substandard" in Webster's Third, on the grounds that ain't is "used orally in most parts of the U.S. by many cultivated speakers."
The Story of Ain't
By David Skinner
Harper, 349 pages, $26.99
There were plenty of dictionaries that used the name of Noah Webster—the 19th-century lexicographer whose 1828 "An American Dictionary of the English Language" helped unite a young nation—but the Merriam versions were different. They were more comprehensive, better researched, proudly labeled "unabridged" and designed to be the authority on usage. "Webster's Second," as David Skinner puts it in "The Story of Ain't," "spoke for America's learned classes"—and to a middle-class hungry for culture and learning.
The new version of the revered dictionary landed with a thud loud enough to topple the "Quiet Please" sign in every library in America. Headline writers had their fun ("It Ain't Uncouth To Say Ain't Now" trumpeted the Houston Press). The Atlantic called Webster's Third "a very great calamity," and the New York Times urged the publisher to keep printing the second edition and start afresh on its replacement. In the most famous attack of them all, the critic Dwight Macdonald shredded Webster's Third in the New Yorker, lamenting it as part of a trend "that is debasing our language by rendering it less precise and thus less effective as literature and less efficient as communication."
It is this, "what may be the single greatest language controversy in American history," that Mr. Skinner sets out to explore in "The Story of Ain't." He begins in 1950, when Merriam chose the lexicographer Philip Gove as editor of a new Webster. Gove had very definite views on what a dictionary should be. No "artificial notions of correctness or superiority" would mar his work. A dictionary "must be descriptive and not prescriptive," he wrote.
To make room for new words, Gove ditched some 250,000 entries, cutting material that he deemed archaic (Webster's Second took pride in defining any word that Chaucer had used) or better suited to encyclopedias, like historical events. Anyone who wished to know what aswowe ("In a swoon") or punquetto ("strumpet") meant would just have to keep the older volume handy. He also sped up decision making; no longer would the editorial board spend an hour discussing the merits of including hot dog in the volume, as he claimed it did for Webster's Second. (Hot dog made it into Webster's Third: "a heated wienerwurst or Frankfurter, esp. one placed in a split roll; —used also interjectionally to express surprise or approval. Slang.")
Most significantly, Gove wanted to pay heed to the newly prominent "structural linguistics," which taught not only that language does and must change but also that spoken language was the norm and that usage was relative. The primary purpose of these tenets, according to Mr. Skinner, was "corrective: to adjust the attitude of English teachers to become less rule-bound and more tolerant of linguistic variety." Gove junked Webster's Second usage labels—colloquial, erroneous, incorrect and illiterate—and replaced them with the terms substandard and nonstandard. Gove explained the criteria for both in language so convoluted that a pretzel would blush. Macdonald put it more succinctly: Substandard meant "not used by educated people"—words such as hisself. Nonstandard applied to words that Webster's Third were deemed "too widely current in reputable context to be labeled substandard." For example, irregardless is nonstandard, a distinction that, as Macdonald wrote, "raises doubts about the compilers' notion of a reputable context." The verdict of Webster's Second on irregardless? Erron. or humorous, a judgment that struck Macdonald as the right one.
Macdonald's critique of Webster's Third was by far the most devastating and for its verve and intelligence is still worth reading today. (It was included in his 1962 collection, "Masscult and Midcult," which NYRB Classics reissued last year.) His major complaint was not that Webster's Third tried to reflect language as it is spoken but that it failed miserably at giving the reader any sense whatsoever of what usage he might prefer. Isn't it only fair, he argued, to let readers know that some people believe that infer does not mean imply or that others detect a difference between disinterested ("impartial") and uninterested ("not interested")?
Mr. Skinner does a fine job detailing the controversy that greeted Webster's Third, but he is even stronger when describing the internal politics at Merriam and the mechanics of revising a dictionary. (Editors spent a decade perusing everything from newspapers to food containers to owner's manuals for new words and usages, using only black or red pencils and never reading for more than two hours at a stretch, lest attention lag.) Anyone contemplating a dictionary-making career will read this book and think about switching to something less arduous, like, say, coal mining.
For all the vehemence of the attacks, the controversy only helped sales of Webster's Third, and since 1961, according to its publisher, three million copies have been sold. It has been updated many times in the past 50 years, though not fully revised. Work on Webster's Fourth began in 2008, but there is no date scheduled for its publication. To language purists, Philip Gove may have been a gate-crasher (a word added by him to Webster's Third), but as "The Story of Ain't" makes clear, Gove created a dictionary for the way we do speak, not for the way we should.
Yet if you page through a copy of Webster's Second, you'll see why this volume was so revered. It remains a pretty sumptuous affair, with a musky odor that could be best described as Eau d' Oxford. The full-page color plates devoted to single subjects (Insects! Gems! Steamship line flags!) retain their vivid hues, and by reading the section devoted to Arbitrary Signs one can learn the symbols used in stamp collecting. Webster's Second is a marvelous artifact, a time machine back to the 1930s and a wondrous way to lose oneself for a few hours. It is, of course, out of print, and even the best local libraries may not carry a copy.
Now, ain't that a shame?
—Mr. Kelly is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.