No single dictionary ever saw a controversy like the nationwide freakout that greeted Webster's Third, which achieved its status as the most controversial dictionary ever by appearing to endorse vulgar English as good English.
Here are 5 of the most controversial and weirdest words added to Webster's Third as compiled by Huffington Post
Irregardless
Having labeled irregardless prohibitively “nonstandard,” Life magazine (and others) singled out the entry to say that Webster’s Third had “abandoned any effort to distinguish between good and bad usage—between the King’s English, say, and the fishwife’s.”
Imply and Infer
While teachers talk themselves breathless trying to convince students of the difference between imply and infer, Webster’s Third perversely muddied the issue by using imply to define infer and vice versa. The second sense ofi mply said, “to indicate or call for recognition of... not by express statement but by logical inference.” The second sense of infer said, “to derive by reasoning or implication.”
These definitions seemed to relish in the gray area between these two words, which most educated people treat as separate as oil and water. The American Bar Association Journal highlighted the definitions while accusing Webster’s Third of “devaluing the verbal currency of the English language.”
Journalistic
So many people opposed the addition of this word to the dictionary and it was said to be devoid of meaning and too superficious.
Masturbation
The dictionary described masturbation ‘as onanism, self-pollution’?” People felt the dictionary was been unfriendly to sexual terms.
Ain't
In the words of the Chicago Tribune, “the word ‘ain’t’ ain’t a grammatical mistake anymore.” The Toronto Globe and Mail, however, was not laughing. It said in an editorial, “A dictionary’s embrace of the word ain’t will comfort the ignorant, confer approval upon the mediocre, and subtly imply that proper English is the tool only of the snob.”
Even worse, said the newspaper, speaking in the midst of the early Cold War, a bad dictionary could help undermine communications with the Russians and thus bring about a nuclear apocalypse.