In case you missed it, WEEKLY STANDARD contributor David Skinner has a terrific piece in the current issue of Humanities, which he edits. Entitled "Ain't That the Truth," the essay tackles Webster's Third, "The Most Controversial Dictionary in the English Language." Why controversial? Where to begin? For starters, there was a listing for the word "ain't." But as many of us were told growing up, "Ain't ain't a word." Life magazine went off on such words as "irregardless," "finalize," and "concretize." But as Skinner points out, Life made its own share of mistakes in misinterpreting a number of words appearing in the third edition. If you've ever wondered what it takes to issue a new edition of a lexicon, this piece gives you a peek: "One chemist ... needed over six years to review and comment on his assignment of 12,790 terms, which included an estimated quarter-million slips of paper." It is a labor of love, a thankless job. And not everyone will be pleased. For instance, there's the late David Foster Wallace who has written about the "controversial" introductory essay in Webster's Third by editor Philip Gove. Except, as Skinner points out, Gove's essay appears nowhere in the dictionary. So was Wallace confused? Or was he not as familiar as he claimed to be? Find out for yourself--I ain't tellin'.