Word: popular
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Despite the stout resistance of grammarians and scholars, the vulgarisms of popular speech are finally gaining their deserved recognition. Such at least is the opinion set forth in an editorial in "Liberty" which takes up the cause of natural expressions such as "He don't" and "It's me" as opposed to the stilted "He doesn't" and "It's I." "Ain't," the writer admits with a sigh, is gradually losing ground in its fight to supplant the awkward "am not" or "aren...
...phrases which so completely violate the principles of correct grammar as "He don't" are to become permissible in good usage, purists and scholars may indeed mourn the loss of a great battle in their age long fight against popular ignorance and carelessness. And America, often belittled by foreigners as a land of little culture and less scholarship, will be quite defenceless against the jibes of its European detractors...
However loud the popular cry may grow against the difficulty and affection of speaking corectly, however much "Liberty" may protest against the refusal of dictionary makers to substitute the easy idiom of the masses for the artificial language of scholarship, the essentials of good speech in a language as completely crystallized as English must remain the same. The efforts of the language reformers to force doubtful or incorrect expressions into recognized good usage can have but one result--to subvert good usage itself...
Dartmouth and Williams followed Yale as the most popular men's college after Princeton. Yale polled 365 votes and Dartmouth came second with 34. Norma Shearer won a close race from Greta Garbo as the most popular feminine star in the film firmament. Adolph Menjou's margin of popularity over Dougias Fanbanks was 101 to 50 however...
...survey of athletic contests of last year and to date this year shows that the Harvard-Yale competition is much keener than popular opinion would allow. The edge in victories actually rests with Harvard. Each university can claim three major sport victories, with one tie contest. In the lesser sport engagements, the Crimson holds a 9 to 8 margin of success, with one meeting tied...