Old books 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?, and let it live for a humorous effect or for reproducing regional speech). Fortunately, language historians dissociate themselves from some of the problems that occupy teachers and editors and can do their business in a dispassionate way. Every word, low or sublime, deserves an etymology. Likewise, many bad people whose 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 clearly go back to is not and does not, but ain’t cannot be a(i) not, for what is a(i)? It is tempting to trace ain’t to amn’t Since amn’t hardly exists at all, only am not could have been the source of ain’t. However, no manipulation of the sounds in the group am not will produce ain’t. Besides this, ain’t is not tied to the first person singular (consider he ain’t, among others). Aren’t, especially in aren’t I?, seems to provide a better etymon, but here, too, the phonetic difficulty is almost insurmountable, because in words with the combination rn (as in earn, learn, and the like) r is never lost.
Some other contracted forms are also puzzling, but not as impenetrable. How did will not become won’t? The answer: it did not. The conjugational form of what is now will was wol, so that won’t derives from woln’t, with l being lost before nt (shan’t underwent a similar development). Do not, when contracted, should have produced something like doont dunt. It is usually believed that don’t owes its modern pronunciation to the influence of won’t (though there are other opinions). Can’t, which in British English is homonymous with the name 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 is undoubtedly the hardest to explain.
In the scholarly literature, ain’t has been discussed many times, and, on the whole, 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, and of course, there can be no comparison between them, but the etymological part of The Century is admirable. Its author, Charles P. G. Scott, did not elaborate on the origin of ain’t, but he pointed out that this form stands not only for am not, is not, and are not but also for have not and has not. This was true a hundred years ago and is still true of regional speech in the United States. (Ain’t occurs much more often in American than in British English, even though Dickens made it a familiar feature of several of his Cockney characters.)
The Middle English for have and has was han and hath (the latter form is remembered because the Authorized Version and Shakespeare use it). The way from hath not to hain’t is easy, the more so as -th in hathn’t probably had the value of th- in Modern English this. Dropping one’s aitches and adding them 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. In Modern English, the perfect is formed only with the help of the verb have (he has come, he has done), but in Middle English two auxiliaries— have and be —competed in the formation of this tense, as they still do in German, for example. Only such fossilized phrases as he is gone remind us of that state of affairs. In late Middle English, ain’t, by being a contraction of both isn’t and hathn’t, played its role very well indeed. As time went on, ain’t began to be used with all persons and came to mean both have not and am/is/are not.
The reconstruction offered above presupposes that ain’t is a rather old form. Yet no citation of it predates 1778 in the OED. Such 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. At the moment, the emergence and 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.
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Anatoly Liberman is the author of
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.