Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 26, 1993 TAG: 9305260010
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
We've struggled for so long to resist that ugly little negative contraction and now Merriam-Webster says "ain't" ain't so bad after all.
"Ain't" made it into the newest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
The word has long appeared in unabridged dictionaries as well as Webster's New World Dictionary, but most identify it as substandard or slang.
Merriam-Webster, America's largest dictionary publisher, now includes it without any warning against its use.
Other new words and terms are signs of the times: Safe sex, date rape, boom box, politically correct, downscale, wire fraud, voice mail, significant other, veg out.
You'd think Noah Webster, great granddaddy of American English, would be turning over in his grave.
But he ain't.
Webster was a renegade lexicographer who would likely rejoice in the new edition.
Friday, incidentally, is the 150th anniversary of his death.
"I'm sure part of his reaction to `ain't' would be defiant pride in its colloquial Americanism," said Frederick Mish, editor-in-chief of Merriam-Webster Inc. "He very much favored all sorts of words if they were widely used, not just the good words."
by CNB