David B. Guralnik; Influential Dictionary Editor

David B. Guralnik, the daring lexicographer who gave “ain’t” respectability a half-century ago by including it in his dictionary and was scolded two decades later for excising “kike” and “nigger,” has died. He was 79.

Guralnik, editor in chief of the Webster’s New World line of dictionaries from 1948 until 1985, died Friday at his suburban Cleveland home of colon cancer.

Legitimizing the slang term “ain’t” as a substitute for the contraction “isn’t” was considered scandalous in 1951 when Guralnik included it in his first Webster’s New World dictionary.

“It was a revolution at the time,” he said years later.

But Guralnik, who believed lexicographers were reporters and not arbiters of language, felt he was merely recording the evolution of American English by spelling out a word in common usage.

“Language is constantly in a state of flux,” he told The Times in 1970. “In compiling the dictionary, we report the state of the language as it exists at any given time. Changes in language may be unfortunate, but to decry them is as useless as decrying taxes or loss of chastity.”

A leader in the Cleveland Jewish community, Guralnik caused almost as much furor with his 1970 Second College Edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary by eliminating “kike” as a derogatory term for Jews and “nigger” as a slur referring to African Americans. In the edition’s introduction, Guralnik explained that “it was decided in the selection process that this dictionary could easily dispense with those true obscenities.” Nevertheless, the third edition of the dictionary, published after Guralnik’s retirement, restored them.

British lexicographers mocked the deletions as “Guralnikism” and Oxford English Dictionary Editor R.W. Burchfield publicly rebuked the American. Guralnik defended his removal of the words by saying they had all but disappeared from usage in the 1960s when the second edition was being prepared.

“The very nature of slang,” he said repeatedly, “is that it has to be fresh. When it stops being fresh, it has to be replaced by something else.”

Born in Cleveland, Guralnik earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Case Western Reserve University there and intended to become a teacher. But he took a summer job as a dictionary writer at World Publishing Co. in Cleveland, where he would stay most of his life, resisting publishing lures in New York.

Fluent in six languages, Guralnik was an Army translator during World War II.

He returned to the publishing company in 1948 and became editor in chief of its New World line of dictionaries, bringing out the landmark, 145,000-word Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language in 1953.

Monitoring the ever-changing language, he led his staff in overhauling the dictionary every couple of decades, and introduced specialized dictionaries for students and young people.

“Our emphasis is on the English language as spoken in America, and for that reason we chose to call it the Dictionary of the American Language,” he said in 1981. “It does for the American language what the Oxford English Dictionary does for the language as a whole.”

Far from cringing at change, Guralnik seemed to relish it, often stating: “Change in language is like the growth of any other organism. You can’t see it unless you have time-stop photography. A dictionary is a form of time-stop photography for language.”

He added a new word to the dictionary when his staff found it in enough places to believe it had become a part of the language. He added “chaise lounge,” for example, as well as the literal French “chaise longue” meaning “long chair” or a chair with an attached footstool, after his staff found the common misspelling in a Sears Roebuck catalog.

Obsolete words often worked their way back into language and the dictionary, Guralnik said, when a prominent politician popularized them. Ousted Vice President Spiro T. Agnew was legendary for that, Guralnik once told The Times, citing Agnew’s use of “tomentose” to refer to college students in a derogatory way.

“ ‘Tomentose’ is a biological term meaning covered with short, matted hair,” Guralnik said with a laugh. “That was good for dictionaries.”

Another source of new words, Guralnik said, is trademarks--frigidaire, escalator, trampoline, thermos--any brand name that so signifies a specific product that it becomes a generic name for that item.

Perhaps Guralnik’s favorite word, which he felt best expressed the creativity of English-speaking Americans, was “OK.” Its first known use occurred in the 19th century, as an abbreviation for the purposely misspelled “oll korrect,” or “all correct.”

In Cleveland, Guralnik delivered a weekly radio commentary on the Yiddish language, and served as president of the Jewish Community Center, vice president of the Cleveland Jewish News, and trustee of the Jewish Community Federation. He was also vice president of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society.

Survivors include his wife, Shirley; a daughter, Eve Harrington; two sisters; and one granddaughter.