In David Skinner’s The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published we learn about the radical Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language.
The stories behind (and in the pages of) these long-titled books show how past editions of dictionaries could be more than dated but also racist, classist, and out of touch: “With the Third, [editors] also responded to a larger shift: a linguistic unbuttoning in American life perceptible in the wake of the democratizing effects of the war.” The New Republic’s review of Skinner’s book reveals that even today democratic attempts at writing dictionaries are scoffed at by proper word-lovers.
