ARLIER THIS MONTH, the dictionary publisher Collins announced a project to crowdsource the creation of a dictionary, asking readers to submit words for inclusion. (Submissions included: Twittersphere, sexting, cyberstalking and captcha.) The Guardian called this method “the antithesis of traditional lexicography” and asked “If [the dictionary] is not intensively researched, edited, proofed and rendered as ‘true’ as possible, why bother to consult it?” Is this debate a product of the digital age? Hardly. David Skinner’s The Story of Ain’t is not the history of that word, but an exploration of the scandal over the publication of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language.
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