author
A. Metcalf
A lifelong student of American English, this linguist and teacher wrote lively, approachable books about how words spread, change, and stick. His work helped make language history feel less like homework and more like a story.
1 Audiobook
The Art of Graining: How Acquired and How Produced. With the description of colors and their applications.
by Charles Pickert, A. Metcalf
About the author
Allan A. Metcalf was an American author, professor of English and journalism at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and a longtime scholar of American English. Sources about his work describe him as a former executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, with a career focused on language, regional speech, and the way new words catch on.
He wrote a number of accessible books on language, including OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, How We Talk: American Regional English Today, Predicting New Words, Presidential Voices, and From Skedaddle to Selfie. Again and again, his writing returned to the same gift: taking something people use every day—words—and showing the history, humor, and culture inside it.
Metcalf also spent decades teaching students, and his obituary remembers him as a beloved faculty member who influenced generations of readers and writers. He died in 2022 at age 81.