A Defense of Elegance

It is easy to say that English is an ageless language ever renewed by fresh words and concepts. But lately it has been polluted by creeping neologisms and solecisms, many of them spawned by military jargon, television cliches and youthcult dialects. Should lexicographers rubber-stamp the linguistic junk or rear back and proclaim standards?

The American Heritage Publishing Co. has steered a canny middle course. To preserve an elegance of sorts, it established a new kind of court: a panel of 104 reasonably literate Americans --including writers, scholars, editors and a U.S. Senator--who spent the past four years judging correct word usage for American Heritage's forthcoming dictionary, which will be published jointly with Houghton Mifflin Co. next month. Polled by mail on lists of questionable words, the panelists reached a rough consensus that will be tabulated in the dictionary text. Whatever the final result, the polling process was a Gallup through contemporary English and its linguistic hurdles.

Bastard Twins. Asked about the use of host as a transitive verb, as when Johnny Carson "hosts" the Tonight Show, Princeton Historian Eric F. Goldman wrote: "This is TVese and public-relationese, hardly an improvement over the English language." On the use of like as a conjunction, like in the Winston cigarette syndrome, Writer John Kiernan commented: "Such things as these persuade me that the death penalty should be retained." Isaac Asimov, the lucid science writer, also denounced finalize as "nothing more than bureaucratic illiteracy--the last resort of the communicatively untalented."

Likewise, New Yorker Music Critic Winthrop Sargeant attacked the suffix -wise, as in taxwise. He called it "a Madison Avenue locution which should be avoided by every civilized person." Author Basil Davenport grudgingly approved advise in the sense of notify. Even so, he ruled, it is permissible only "in business English and Army English, if there is any excuse for the existence of these bastard twins."

The panelists often disagreed. Not about, meaning determination not to do something, puzzled Jacques Barzun, one of the panel's most frequent dissenters. He replied: "I could not have understood its intention or force without your explanation." Writer John Bainbridge called it "mushmouth talk." But Columnist William Zinsser insisted that it has "strength and precision; accept it gladly."

The country's increasing ignorance of Latin was reflected in a question to the panel about media as a singular term and medias as a plural. Taking a swipe at Madison Avenue, Columnist Russell Baker declared: "In Latin, prefer Cicero to BBDO." Asked to rule on erratas as a plural form, Poet Donald Davidson despaired: "To think that we have lived to see the day when such a question can be asked!"

The panelists were not paid; most regarded the job as more fun than work. Their findings were carefully considered by the editors; in more than 600 definitions, the new dictionary includes a usage note that gives a percentage figure on approval-disapproval. For ain't, the usage note states in part: " 'ain't I' is unacceptable in writing other than that which is deliberately colloquial, according to 99% of the panel, and unacceptable in speech to 84%." Happily, the panel was as vigilant against affectation as it was against vulgarity; the note on ain't says that one suggested alternative, aren't I, is acceptable in writing to only 27% of the panel. Drama Critic Louis Kronenberger's comment was typical of the group at large: "A genteelism, and much worse than 'ain't I.' "

Despite their relative flexibility, the panelists produced the kind of clear, cur rent standards that were missing from the surprisingly permissive Webster's Third New International Dictionary of 1961. William Morris, editor of the American Heritage dictionary, feels that such standards are essential if readers are to have "any indication of the social levels of words." But Morris rejects suggestions that the new dictionary is an "American Fowler." Despite their prescriptive brilliance, he says, the Fowler Brothers (Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926) could not possibly reflect a true cross section of the literate community of their time. As Morris sees it, "This is what we believe our usage panel has accomplished."

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