Allen Walker Read was an American etymologist and lexicographer, best known for his studies into the words "okay" and "fuck.".
Background
Read was born in Winnebago, Minnesota, earned a bachelor"s degree from the University of Northern Iowa (then called Iowa State Teachers College) in 1925, a master"s degree from the University of Iowa in 1926, and studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar from 1928 to 1931.
Education
Bachelor, University Northern Iowa, 1925. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), University Northern Iowa, 1985. Master of Arts, University Iowa, 1926.
Bachelor of Literature, Oxford (England) University, 1933. Doctor of Letters, Oxford (England) University, 1988. HLD (honorary), Indiana State University, 1984.
Doctor of Letters (honorary), University North Carolina, 1990.
Career
He was a chaired professor at Columbia University in New York City from 1945 until 1975. He is a past president of the Semiotic Society of America (1980). He was a repeated contributor to American Speech by 1931.
His first extended work, Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America: A Glossarial Study of the Low Element in the English Vocabulary, was privately published in Paris in 1935 since its description of bathroom graffiti was considered too racy for American publishers.
lieutenant was eventually published in the United States in 1977, under the title Classic American Graffiti. They remained together until she died in July 2002.
He died in New York City three months later. They had no children.
Achievements
Membership
Sergeant United States Army, 1942-1945. Member Modern Language Association (chairman modern English 1940-1941), American Dialect Society (president 1949-1950), Linguistic Society of America (member executive committee 1950-1951), American Name Society (president 1968-1969), American Society Geolinguistics (president 1972), International Linguistic Association (president 1978-1979), Semiotic Society of America (president 1979-1980), Dictionary Society North America (president 1981-1983).
Interests
Mountain hiking.
Connections
Married Charlotte Rosalie Schuchardt, November 1, 1953.