Q: If there’s a place in the linguistic world for the words “sexting”, “twerk”, and “totes”, why can’t we finally accept “ain’t”? It’s been in common usage for centuries. When will “ain’t” finally be recognized as a legitimate word?

A: Art and popular culture will never stop trying to elevate “ain’t” from its lowly state. Case in point:

• “Ain’t that a Shame”
• “It Ain’t Necessarily So”
• “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”
• “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”
• “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now”
• “Ain’t too Proud to Beg”
• “Ain’t No Sunshine”
• “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head”
• “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”

And so on, and so on. The Ninja is going to have at least one of those songs stuck in her head for the next month. Hopefully not “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, because that’s a straight road to madness.

The term “ain’t” has been languishing in the grammar margins for at least a century and a half. It’s always been an etymological outlier, and yet was never fully banished from either written or spoken English. This is likely because of its utter efficiency. As far as the Ninja knows, no one is ever confused about its overall meaning (with the possible exception of the occasions when it is one-half of a double negative). It isn’t clunky in either written or spoken language. It dances trippingly off the tongue.

Nevertheless…

As much as the Ninja would like to welcome “ain’t” into the body of formally recognized contractions, she just can’t. And here’s why:

There’s no consensus about which verb “ain’t” is replacing

An extremely brief history of “ain’t”.

The original incarnation of “ain’t” was as a contraction of “are not”, and it first appeared in written form in the late 17^th century as “an’t”. Here is an example of what would be acceptable usage of “an’t”:

You an’t going to attend the ball at the Ruthermere estate? ‘Tis a pity—you shall miss Lady Eliza Mountbatten’s newest twerking routine!”

Hey… if the upper classes used it, as far as Lady Language Ninja is concerned, it was perfectly legit.

However, at some point, possibly in the mid-18th century, “an’t” split into two distinct cells: “aren’t” and “ain’t”. “Ain’t” might have been the progeny of a common pronunciation of “are” (“air” in some regions), but just as likely not, since there seemed to be little regulation of the usage of “ain’t”, which could be (and still is) substituted for numerous unrelated contractions, including:

• Am not (I ain’t twerking in front of my mother!)
• Are not (We ain’t asking you to! She’s going to get more Natty Light.)
• Is not (No she ain’t! She’s sitting on Tucker’s lap!)
• Has not (She ain’t gone yet, but she’s going. And, technically, Tucker ain’t got a lap after the threshing accident.)
• Have not (I ain’t been convinced. I totes need another Natty Light.)

So, “ain’t” is simply too chaotic to be harnessed into a corral of strict usage. It’s like a wild horse that can’t be tamed because it marches to the beat of its own drum while swimming against the stream, and other mixed metaphors.

We can still enjoy the use of “ain’t” in folksy contexts, but it cannot be included in the rigidly formal, recognized English lexicon as a proper contraction, since no one is clear about what it is supposed to be contracting. For the foreseeable future, “ain’t” will be the misfit at the black tie linguistics party, wearing a trucker’s cap and sipping vodka and Mountain Dew, because that’s the way “ain’t” rolls.

Bonus: Ever wonder why “will not” isn’t “willn’t”? This is because in Ye Olde English, “will” was “woll”. We need to bring some old English terms back. Particularly “crapulous”.

Ninja out!

Holly Troupe is a professional web content writer and an amateur everything else. She spends her days writing, eating, and looking for ways to incorporate the term “perfidy” into the urban vernacular.