George Eliot — of all people! — once called correct English “the slang of the prigs.” I happen to be one of those prigs, who not merely slings that slang on every possible occasion but takes a certain quiet but smug pride in using such words as “decimate” and “transpire” with sweet precision. I treat the word “than” as a conjunction and not a preposition, and so say “They are less correct than we” instead of “less correct than us.” I have a strong distaste for the adjective “prestigious” and will go to great lengths to avoid it. I never use “presently” as synonymous with currently. I worry about these things, in my own writing and speech and note mistakes in those of others. Being a prig, as I hope you are beginning to gather, is no easy job: The pay is low, the appreciation is non-existent, and there is scarcely any time off whatsoever.

As language prigs go, I am not quite so rabid as the man who corrected the English of an acquaintance of mine while he was delivering a wedding toast. Still, between the linguistic populists, who feel that all change in language is good and in any case natural and therefore inevitable, and the traditionalists, who view most change as under suspicion and hence worth arguing about, I am staunchly in the camp of the traditionalists. The language traditionalist prefers words to have settled into all but nearly unalterable meanings, locked in a pretty and permanent precision, even though he knows that change — endless, relentless, remorseless change — is in the nature of language. The problem is that, just now, most of the change in language seems so clearly for the worse.