Reviewer Bryce Christensen called The Story of Ain’t “a compelling reminder of the cultural significance of words and word-making.”
In brief: “The editors of the New York Times breathed fire when they saw the word ain’t in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961). However, Skinner brushes aside the Times’ outrage to recover the story of how one brave editor, Philip Gove, dared to publish a dictionary documenting how language actually worked in twentieth-century America, not a carefully trimmed guide to linguistic etiquette.”
David Skinner 