Dictionaries are not democratic.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

A small thing in the larger world perhaps but Collins, the dictionary publisher , may have set a revolution going. If so it's because they just announced the first instance of a dictionary allowing input not only from the usual suspects -- staff lexicographers -- but from the public, or to use the pertinent language: the crowd .

Crowdsourcing, at least partially inspired by James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds, Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few , is first recorded in 2004. The philosophy of the more the merrier. And more creative. Now that task could include lexicography.

Everyone, we know, and thanks to self-publishing can now see, seems to have a novel in them. Maybe there's a dictionary too. For the last …