My mother used to present me with a new word every morning along with breakfast. 
She would send me to the family dictionary to define it and then charge me with using it in a sentance upon returning home after school every weekday.
Now we all have the web (what would we DO without it!?), and wordpress is hosting a new lexicographical (look it up) blog called Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary
The blog doles out daily words from the Dictionary of Samuel Johnson (an original copy of which can be viewed at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in New Haven).
To celebrate Mr. Johnson’s three-hundredth birthday, a definition from the first edition of his dictionary will be posted daily in 2009. It’s interesting to see how the definitions of some words have evolved since the book was first published in 1709 and how other words have totally left the English language all together.
I have a running argument with an old friend about common usage. I say, just because “ain’t” is in the dictionary doesn’t make it proper. She believes if it is common usage, proper follows.
What do you think?