A. J. Aitken
Scottish lexicographer (1921–1998)
Adam Jack Aitken (19 June 1921 – 11 February 1998) was a Scottish lexicographer and leading scholar of the Scots language.
Education and military service
Aitken was born on 19 June 1921 in Edinburgh, grew up in Bonnyrigg, Midlothian, and was educated at Lasswade High School. He was the only son and eldest of the three children of Adam Aitken, a miner, and his first wife Alexandrina Sutherland, who died when Jack was about nine. He suffered neglect as a step-child, but his minister, Rev. Oliver Dryer, helped him to leave home at the age of sixteen. He was able to continue his education thanks to a school bursary. As the son of a miner, he received further bursaries that allowed him to enter the University of Edinburgh in 1939.
He served as a lance bombardier in the Royal Artillery during World War II in North Africa and Sicily. He took part in the Normandy landings landing at Port en Bessin D Day + 2, he drove to join 151 Brigade of the 50th Division beyond Bayeuk. He fought at Tilly-sur-Seulles and Villers-Bocage.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4679290. VIAF identifies the subject as 268398811. The Library of Congress control number is n50034402. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 1998 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “A. J. Aitken” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.