Gene Weingarten is a columnist for the Washington Post who makes humorous observations about a wide variety of topics. He is a favorite in our household – my husband and I always look forward to Mondays, when his column appears in our local newspaper. When our newspaper dropped Weingarten’s column, there was such a howl of protest that it was quickly brought back.

Weingarten (like me) gets cranky about the path that English usage is taking.  His latest column  suggests, in a funny way, that today’s dictionary editors are idiots. You can read it here: http://wapo.st/1a4du1Z?tid=ss_tw

Weingarten has my sympathy. I too insist that infer and imply have different meanings, that irregardless is an ugly word, that it’s important to pronounce both r’s in library, and so on. But my commentary about these words is going to travel in a different direction.

First, he’s chosen the wrong enemy. His gripe is against lexicographers, not the editors of dictionaries. Lexicographers are researchers who chart changes in the way we define and use words over a period of time. Railing against them is about as useless as shaking your fist at a cartographer (a person who makes maps) because we no longer have a country named Bohemia. To put it differently: Shooting the messenger doesn’t change anything.

Weingarten wants us to go back to the 1959 Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, which was still taking a strong stand against all the linguistic usages that were bothering him. I shouted “Hallelujah!” and made a couple of fist pumps when I read his suggestion. But there are problems lurking beneath this apparently sensible idea.

First, back in 1959 there were just as many curmudgeons railing against the way language was changing. Off the top of my head, I can give you two examples. Enthuse, which experts condemned as a “back formation” from enthusiasm, was coming into widespread usage. Contact, which had always been a noun, was starting to be used as a verb. 

Here’s an uncomfortable fact that everyone who loves language has to learn to live with: There was never a golden age of language. Did you know that silly meant “innocent” 800 years ago? When silly began evolving into its present meaning, I’m sure there were cranks who complained bitterly about the deterioration of the English language.

Suppose, though, that we did manage to turn back the clock to 1959, limiting ourselves to the usages prescribed in the dictionary that Weingarten wants us all to use. Here’s what you’d find: A dingbat was a printer’s ornament. Software, burritos, and graffiti didn’t exist. The only people who talked about hybrids were biologists. Halloween was always written with an apostrophe (Hallowe’en).

Like Weingarten, I see changes rushing toward us that set my teeth on edge. The word woman is going to disappear eventually: More and more people are using women as both a singular and plural word. All right is going to be replaced by the one-word version that I despise so much that I’m not going to type it here. Although as a synonym for however will become accepted in formal writing.

What can we do about all this? Just sit back, take it all in, and marvel at the stubborn vitality of our wonderful language.