The Story of Ain't

by David Skinner

  “How fortuitous it would be,” said Churchill, “if we could, as you say, bomb the devils around the clock. When I see your president at lunch today, I shall tell him that I withdraw my suggestion that U.S. bombers join the RAF in night bombing.”3

  The prime minister may not have been persuaded that daytime bombing would work, but the idea of bombing Hitler every hour without reprieve had, as Edward Bernays would have understood, great psychological appeal. The phrase, which would also preserve the equal status of American leadership vis-à-vis the British, had that impressive aspect of just sounding right.

  Among the new words popularized by the war, snafu was a humorous play on acronyms and later defined as “systems normal all fouled up” in Webster’s Third. Blitz was German, as was flak. Screenwriters collected colorful slang while Mencken complained that the bloated prose of New Dealers had become the officialese of the American soldier. The well-named Maury Maverick, an American defense contractor, was irate about the war’s effects on American English: “Let’s stop pointing up programs, finalizing contracts that stem from district, regional, or Washington levels. No more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words activation or implementation will be shot.”4

  Technical and mathematical language were quite common. Operations analysis applied the statistical methods of social science to questions of readiness and strategy. One of Eaker’s preoccupations was the soldiers’ diet, which analysts strove to correlate to illness and readiness to report for duty. Operations was very much a term du jour, used so often it was abbreviated in SOP or standard operating procedure.

  Come March, the Eighth Air Force accomplished one of its signal successes, bombing a submarine plant in Vegesack, near Bremen, Germany. Ninety-seven bombers dropped 268 bombs, each weighing a thousand pounds, on an area no larger than sixty acres. Only two planes were lost in the attack, despite heavy defenses, and the damage to the submarine plant was significant.

  Churchill sent Eaker his compliments: “to you and your officers and men on your brilliant exploit.” Sir Charles Portal, another of Eaker’s doubters, called it “the complete answer to criticism of high altitude, daylight, precision bombing.”

  The Eighth had used AFCE or automatic flight control equipment and measured their effect with a PRU, a photo reconnaissance unit—two terms that would end up in Webster’s. With the aid of such technology, it was determined that 76 percent of the bombs landed within a thousand feet of their intended target.

  Critics moaned about the swollen language, but much of it was due to the changing nature of government and war itself. Modern warfare required modern thinking. And soon the daring of daylight bombing was brought together with the analytical methods of modern military thought. A bombing intelligence group in Washington, D.C., issued a new air doctrine based on the principle that “it is better to cause a high degree of destruction in a few really essential industries or services than to cause a small degree of destruction in many.”5

  It was now more important to bomb Germany’s petroleum supplies and ball bearing factories than its cities. From this line of thought came the idea for the simultaneous attacks on Regensburg and Schweinfurt by the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces, which resulted in language and drama that soon became familiar back home.

  A battle in military jargon was a show and this mission, code-named Pointblank, was the Big Show. It became the basis of a wildly successful novel, Twelve O’Clock High by Beirne Lay Jr. and Sy Bartlett—later a film starring Gregory Peck and then a TV series. In the novel, one of the generals laconically explains the new targeting doctrine:

  He reached into his pocket and brought out a shiny red object which he held in hand so all could see it. “Approximately half of these German ball bearings are manufactured at [Schweinfurt],” he said. “Last night, Air Chief Marshal, Lord Charles Portal, handed me this one. I’ll repeat what he said to me: ‘If you can stop the Jerries from making these things, it’s going to be a much shorter war.’ ”6

  The only problem with this (in fact) American strategy may have been that the Allies didn’t carry it far enough. Years later Albert Speer, Hitler’s minister of armament production, told Eaker, “If you had repeated your bombing attacks and destroyed our ball-bearing industry, the war would have been over a year earlier.”7 It was a little more complicated than that, actually, but the Allied air campaign had opened a second front well before the invasion of the continent, and the American contribution was enormous.

  Chapter 18

  After Webster’s Second, William Allan Neilson oversaw the making of a biographical dictionary, extending Merriam’s coverage of “noteworthy persons” into a stand-alone volume. While the left talked of the working class, and Hollywood made films about the common man, Neilson’s plan for a dictionary of biography conceded little to the new order of who and what mattered.

  Only two movie stars had made the cut for Webster’s Second. Many more motion picture actors were considered for the biographical dictionary, but their social status was clear even in the planning stages when Neilson and others estimated that perhaps fifty movie actors warranted notice, compared to a thousand legitimate-stage performers. Baseball players too were to be included, starting with Hall of Fame members, since by the late 1930s leaving out Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb no longer made sense, but there was much less confidence about reserving space for, say, female tennis professionals.

  The relative significance of countries was familiar: First came American figures, next those of the British Empire, and then “other countries and classes.” The Editorial Board had decided that “in the case of foreigners of second-rate and lesser importance, it will not be considered necessary to devote much time or effort to the running down of birthplaces when the information is not available in the first source or two consulted.”1

  Merriam president Robert C. Munroe, successor to Asa Baker, and a handful of editors, including general editor J. P. Bethel, began tinkering with various plans for Webster’s Third. Updating their big book, it appeared, could only come at the expense of the great load of encyclopedic facts that had helped make dictionaries one-stop reference works. A universal dictionary like Webster’s Second that tried to be everything to everyone was still fashionable but no longer possible.

  Since 1864, every new revision of the company’s largest dictionary had brought a significant increase in the overall size of the book. Webster’s Second was 26 percent larger than the 1909 edition, which was 41 percent larger than the 1890 dictionary. But such growth could not go on indefinitely. A new edition that increased as much, measuring even 15 to 25 percent larger, “would hardly be practical.”

  Bethel drew up a memo stating the nature of the problem as the current leadership saw it: “Mr. Munroe and some of the editors . . . concur in the opinion that W1934 [Webster’s Second] represents in physical size (number of pages, bulk, weight) and in its list price the top limit of a one-volume dictionary.”2

  How to proceed? Two basic alternatives presented themselves: a new edition in multiple volumes or a smaller, less complete edition in one volume.

  No one at Merriam thought it commercially wise to make Webster’s Third a multivolume dictionary. The most likely solution was always a smaller, and less comprehensive, Webster’s Third.

  If so, the very idea for Merriam’s largest dictionary would have to change. The unabridged had always been the source of Merriam’s other dictionaries. More than any other book, it represented the value of the firm’s total holdings, all its lexicographical assets. But already Merriam was developing smaller, specialized dictionaries, such as the dictionary of biography that Neilson had edited and a dictionary of geography. Would Webster’s Third become something less than a comprehensive collection whose coverage “blanketed” all the firm’s smaller dictionaries?

  Of course, one of the great advantages Merriam enjoyed was that its citation files had been growing steadily for well over a c
entury to become the most extensive in the world. And now editors would have to find ways to prune that advantage. If Webster’s Third was to fit between two covers, the range of possible material had to be reduced. And the biographical section along with the pronouncing gazetteer were among the first items to be mentioned for likely sacrifice. Not that money wasn’t to be made selling such material. The dictionary of biography performed very well in the marketplace.

  It was simply no longer possible to build on the great tradition of big Webster’s dictionaries by adding ever more material. There was simply too much that could be added. Bethel’s memo, which he sent to Neilson, mentioned a number of specialized dictionaries—chemistry, law, medicine, and so on—that Merriam might undertake as profitable stand-alone projects. But a single-volume dictionary that comprehended all that growth in specialized language in addition to the ever-growing lists of words from all the other categories included in Webster’s Second could no longer serve as the firm’s ideal. This system—a hierarchy of information and books in some ways mirroring the world at large—had to change. The next big dictionary would have to be somehow leaner, if not simply less, than Webster’s Second.

  Few were prepared to accept the lamentable necessity of dumping profitable material that dictionary users had come to expect, yet there was already talk of Webster’s Second as a golden era not to be seen again. Reviewing possible scenarios for the next big dictionary, Bethel gave voice to a minority opinion that called Webster’s Second the “ultimate in comprehensiveness of editorial content possible.” According to this view, only ten years after its publication, Webster’s Second was “a sort of monument to a closed era of lexicography.”

  In late 1944, the Editorial Board met to discuss the problem. Dr. Neilson asked what competition Webster’s Second faced in the marketplace. He also wanted to know if there were any competing large dictionaries on the horizon. President Munroe responded that competition today was “practically nil.”

  The lovely old multivolume Century Dictionary had not been updated in many years. A two-volume edition was for sale but out of date. The short version of the Oxford English Dictionary “has never been a real competitor.” And Funk & Wagnalls hadn’t revised its big Standard Dictionary since 1913. The only competition they faced came from the “spurious Webster” put out by the Syndicate Publishing Company in Cleveland, a dictionary that had never been thoroughly revised but sold at a much better price than Webster’s Second.

  This other Webster’s dictionary was spurious because it did not descend directly from Noah Webster, but it took advantage of Merriam’s lack of a monopoly on the Webster name. There was always a chance that this bastard Webster’s might assemble a large staff and make a big book of its own to compete with Merriam’s unabridged, but President Munroe thought it highly unlikely.

  The editors and President Munroe had already discussed the problem extensively with each other. What they wanted to know was, What did the great William Allan Neilson think?

  “Regardless of the competition,” it seemed to him that “we have an obligation to the public to continue the publication of a dictionary comparable in size and content” to Webster’s Second. Furthermore, he believed, “we owe it to ourselves as a matter of prestige to continue the publication of such a work.”

  It was a matter of prestige. Like the Harvard Classics, the Webster name ought to suggest the absolute highest quality. However, the board was willing to consider some changes.

  They were open to the publication of more specialized dictionaries, which made sense given the pace of specialization and advances in professional knowledge. Exactly how those related to the big dictionary was not clear, but it was possible that such work would aid in the eventual full-scale effort of Webster’s Third. If space in the next big dictionary were indeed so precious, well, perhaps some room could be saved by shortening the pronunciation guide. Reduce a little here and there, and the problem did not seem so large.

  “It was suggested,” according to the official record, “that the omission of the Gazetteer and Biography sections and such other savings as are made in the front matter will probably be sufficient to take care of the necessary ‘new matter’ for the Third Edition.”

  This was not really true. What research had so far been done on the problem showed that much larger cuts were needed.

  Neilson seemed to realize this. He asked the board to discuss whether some of the encyclopedic material from the main vocabulary should be cut, but Munroe and Lucius Holt, who had been on the staff of both Webster’s Second and the 1909 edition, objected. Everyone objected, in fact, even Neilson, who did, however, say that perhaps the table of archery rounds could be left out. And, once he was on the subject, he asked, What about all those history tables? Of battles, of wars, of treaties? The others were sympathetic but no one seconded his suggestions. It was easy, everyone knew, to single out a handful of items that might be jettisoned, but it was all too much to think what those discrete excisions would mean once translated into whole categories of material.

  And what about the countless pictures? Neilson said he thought many of the illustrations not very good to begin with: “The pictures of birds, beasts, and fish could virtually all be thrown out without loss.” President Munroe said he actually thought the dog illustrations were very good.

  The board would stir, as if to take action, but then dither. Biblical names might be left out, and so perhaps obsolete spelling variants. The historical time line for vocabulary might be adjusted. But after a long meeting the only decision made was “that all of these matters would have to be taken up in detail at future meetings of the Board.”3

  Come spring Munroe and the senior editors of Merriam were still hemming and hawing. President Munroe spoke to a meeting of the Editorial Board members and some of the sales staff, returning to the great issue stalking them. “We have reached the limits of physical size in this single-volume unabridged dictionary: What shall we do now?”

  Again the discussion turned to the role of the smaller specialized dictionaries, which presented various problems, including the need for specialized sales forces and the possibility that the books might compete with the next unabridged dictionary. Then an even bigger problem was raised, this time framed as a matter of definition: If the unabridged dictionary did not “blanket” the coverage of these other dictionaries, their great big dictionary could not be said to be “unabridged” and Merriam could not go on calling the big dictionary the “supreme authority.”

  For everyone in the room this was a sticking point, to use a phrase dated 1946 in the Merriam-Webster files.

  The progress of science and the specialization of knowledge had taken them far, far from the nineteenth-century moment when it seemed possible for a small team of well-educated men to build an unstumpable dictionary, a dictionary to answer any and every question. But the marketing of Webster’s dictionaries and Merriam’s sense of identity were still beholden to this claim. Rather than surrender the title of “supreme authority,” the board and its sales staff even preferred to envision a multivolume dictionary, which no one believed could be anywhere near as profitable.

  The meeting took a vote and everyone present agreed that, yes, at some point in the vagueness of time Merriam might be forced to make their unabridged dictionary a multivolume publication. That was unfortunate but acceptable, all agreed. So long as they could call it the “supreme authority.”4

  On February 13, 1946, in Northampton, Massachusetts, William Allan Neilson, former president of Smith College, passed away. Or, as a euphemism-disapproving linguist might put it, he died.

  His name adorned a standard collection of Shakespeare, the Harvard Classics, the Cambridge History of Literature, and Webster’s Second. He was, said the New York Times, a man of “executive ability, liberality, and recognized scholarship.” Recognized, indeed. Though he had long stopped trying to keep up with new research and methods, his “vo
ice was heard beyond academic limits in the sphere of world affairs.” A true successor of Charles William Eliot.

  In the uncharitable light of retrospect, Neilson is also remembered as an unusually late Victorian—Mr. Clean Language, Mr. Hygiene, Mr. Fencing of the Tables, warning “the unworthy” not to approach. But the unworthy—in colleges, in the military, and elsewhere—no longer included women, a development he had in many ways championed. For that and many other favors, Neilson was revered and doted on by the students and alumnae of Smith.

  And in his pawky manner, Neilson returned that affection without ever surrendering his light touch. On the road he had sometimes fallen into conversation with salesmen, gregarious types who were always glad to advertise their wares. Asked what line of business he was in, Neilson liked to say “skirts”—an inspired usage though labeled slang in the dictionary he had overseen.5

  “I am not a linguist and have no claim to being a lexicographer,” wrote Philip Gove at the close of World War II, in a letter to G. & C. Merriam Company, inquiring about employment opportunities.

  Gove had volunteered for the navy when war was declared and had been stationed as an officer at naval air bases in San Diego and Seattle. It had been a comparatively serene war for him, with time to take a host of correspondence courses in ordnance, gunnery, and other matters of naval operations. Rising to lieutenant commander, he thought about pursuing a postwar military career but too often bristled at the infelicities of bureaucratic life. In a letter to Grace he poked fun at the government prose he was suffering. The use of weather reports had been described as “the effective utilization of meteorological advice,” and he had to wonder “whether I could put up with it.”

  His occasional dissatisfaction with standard operating procedures was visible to others. A commanding officer described Gove incompletely but well in an official report: “He has rather definite convictions and at times is not tactful or diplomatic.”