Bad Grammar, Then and Now
Language critics have been emitting cries of outrage about the appalling state of American English almost since American English existed. The funny thing about it is that people's definition of "appalling" keeps changing. Most of the usage problems that annoyed yesterday's language mavens either no longer exist, or are no longer considered a problem. For instance, the famous dictionary maker Noah Webster complains in his 1789 book Dissertations on the English Language that Americans are increasingly using plural verbs with words like odds, means, pains, wages, alms, amends, gallows, news, and riches. Webster explains that these words, although they appear to be plural because of their s endings, are logically singular. He provides published quotes to bear him out: "By this means, there was nothing left to the Parliament of Ireland;" "He will assemble materials with much pains;" "This action was a necessary amends;" "Was ever riches gotten by your golden mediocrities?"
Most of the words on Webster's list evolved to become exactly the opposite of what he wanted. Odds, pains, riches, wages, alms, and amends are unambiguously plural, while means and gallows are used either way. Only news has reverted to being always singular. Logical arguments, it turns out, are no match for an s ending. By the time Webster died in 1843, "singular" plurals were a nonissue. These days, style guides rarely even mention them.
By the mid-nineteenth century, grammar critics were focusing on a whole new set of problems. A spate of books appeared with titles like Words and Their Uses and Everyday Errors of Speech. These guides to elegant English were meant for people eager to take advantage of American social mobility and determined not to be held back by their manner of speech. Every author had his own pet peeves, most of them utterly puzzling to a twenty-first-century reader.
William Mathews, who wrote Words: Their Use and Abuse, castigates American English speakers for saying alone for only and likewise for also. He also dislikes the use of celebrity to refer to a person instead of a state of being ("He was a celebrity" instead of "He attained celebrity") and the use of appreciate to indicate a rise in value. His book rejects as ignorant the phrase illy used instead of ill used, excessively to mean exceedingly, and directly for as soon as ("They left directly they had finished dinner"). Some of these usages have since disappeared from American English. Others—like celebrity and appreciate—are a normal part of the language. Even James Kilpatrick would not complain about them.
A similar book, Words and Their Uses, by Richard Grant White features a chapter on "words that are not words." Among White's nonwords are donate ("this word is utterly abominable"); gubernatorial; presidential; practitioner; reliable; pants to mean trousers; and the illicitly formed words jeopardize (from jeopard) and resurrect (from resurrection). Somehow none of these outrageous usages is considered a problem today. In spite of White's best efforts, nearly all of his "words that are not words" became words, while real words like jeopard have inexplicably disappeared.
With few exceptions, the degraded usages of yesterday have either fallen by the linguistic wayside, or are now accepted as standard. So standard, in fact, that most people, including authors of style guides, have no idea that they ever constituted a problem. In spite of Americans' seemingly unbreakable penchant for bad word choices, the language has survived and thrived. Could it be that it will also survive the use of hopefully as a sentence adverb, real for very, enormity to mean immensity, and all the other annoyances that exasperate grammar sticklers these days?
Every era brings its own linguistic innovations, along with people convinced that these changes spell the end of decent English. It is impossible to say what will happen to the words on current disapproval lists. How many educated people, even now, realize that enormity shouldn't be used for immensity? Will very eventually go the way of jeopard? It's anybody's guess. So far, American English has absorbed all assaults on its time-honored usage traditions without noticeably weakening. Hopefully, it will continue to do so. Or at least, as Noah Webster might have said, the odds is good that it will.