Old books called ain’t
vulgar. Our egalitarian
predilections have partly wiped out the difference between “vulgar” and “cool,”
and the idea of being judgmental or appearing better educated than one’s neighbor
scares the living daylights out of intellectuals. Dictionaries, we are told,
should be descriptive, not prescriptive, while tampering with ignorance smacks
of elitism, the worst sin of all.
Consequently, ain’t has
been promoted to “nonstandard.”
Still usage panels condemn its occurrence in formal writing, tolerate it
(up to a point) in the first person singular (ain’t I?
reproducing regional speech.
Fortunately, language historians dissociate themselves from some of the
problems that occupy teachers and editors and can do their business
presence we resent have telephones and should, alas, be listed in the
phonebook.
The derivation of ain’t
is not at all obvious. For
example, isn’t and doesn’t
for what is a(i)?
However, no manipulation of the sounds in the group am not
this, ain’t is not tied to the
first person singular (consider he ain’t, among others). Aren’t,
phonetic difficulty is almost insurmountable, because in words with the
combination rn (as in earn,
and the like) r is never
lost.
Some other contracted forms are also puzzling, but not as
impenetrable. How did will not
not. The conjugational form of
what is now will was wol,
with l being lost before nt
underwent a similar development). Do
not, when contracted, should have produced
something like doont or dunt.
usually believed that don’t owes
its modern pronunciation to the influence of won’t
Kant, as it is pronounced in
American English, may have acquired its vowel in phrases like I cant’
and I shan’t, but this remains intelligent
guessing. Of all such forms ain’t
In the scholarly literature, ain’t
with good results. The way was
shown by The Century Dictionary,
whose virtues I never tire of praising.
This dictionary has been totally eclipsed by the OED,
them, but the etymological part of The Century
Its author, Charles P. G. Scott, did not elaborate on the origin of ain’t,
for am not, is not, and are
not but also for have
has not.
is still true of regional speech in the United States.
English, even though Dickens made it a familiar feature of several of his
Cockney characters.) The Middle
English for have and has
and hath (the latter form is
remembered because the Authorized Version and Shakespeare use it).
The way from hath not to hain’t
where they don’t belong is a telltale sign of many British dialects, in
particular Cockney. Anecdotes
about barbers telling their clients that there are germs in the “hair” and then
comforting them with the statement that they mean “the hatmosphere of the hair”
are countless. It is therefore no
wonder that hain’t alternated
with ain’t.
formed only with the help of the verb have (he has come, he has done),
but in Middle English two auxiliaries—have
in the formation of this tense, as they still do in German, for example.
is gone remind us of that state of
affairs. In late Middle English, ain’t,
not and am/is/are not.
The reconstruction offered above presupposes that ain’t
colloquialisms are often recorded late.
A confirming quotation from a 16th-century author would be
welcome, but in etymological studies one seldom gets all one wishes for.
history of ain’t seem to have
been investigated with sufficient thoroughness. The “standard usage”
rejects this form. The so-called
literary norm is capricious and often unpredictable: it absorbs some “vulgar”
elements and gets rid of others.
If I were fond of coy titles and showy flourishes, I would ask: “Ain’t
it odd?” But I am not and will
therefore do without a final cheap joke.
Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears here each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to blog.us@oup.com; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.”
Comments
Ross Ziskind said :
Sep 26, 2006
It’s interesting that Trollope, in “The Way We Live Now” (1875), uses “ain’t” quite freely, in the first, second and third persons. He seems to use it as emphasis when the speaker is in the grip of a strong emotion. He doesn’t make any distinction based on the social class of the speaker; the word is often used by the upper class characters in the novel.