Melville House Books

As Stephen Moss of The Guardian observes, in dictionary pages over the centuries, “language has been a battlefield.” (He cites Dr. Johnson, whose dictionary defined oat, for example, thusly: “a grain which in England is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people.”) Now, as Moss reports in this story, the Collins Dictionary will exploit such contentiousness “with the launch of an online Living Dictionary, in which netheads can suggest new words and argue over whether they should be added to the print version of the dictionary.” Says the editor in chief, Jeremy Butterfield, “This is a completely new concept which will provide direct contact between the people who compile dictionaries and the end users.” Up for two weeks, fights have already broken out. When one user suggest “Henmania” for “the hype surrounding the English tennis player Tim Henman,” another user wrote in, “I can’t stand this word, not because of the person involved, but because it’s a non-word. If you add mania to Henman you get Henmanmania. Henmania is going crazy for hens.” Wrote another, “Until Henman actual wins something I don’t think he should have any word associated with him, unless it is the rather derogatory ‘soft cock’ that the Australians use to describe him.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.