Dictionary.com is making major changes to more than 15,000 of its definitions, from capitalising Black to updating entries about sexual orientation, aiming to foreground people over “clinical language”.
On Tuesday the website, which with 70m monthly users describes itself as the world’s leading digital dictionary, released what it called its largest ever update.
Across the board, Dictionary.com’s language referring to LGBTQIA people has been revised to change “homosexual” to “gay” and “homosexuality” to “gay sexual orientation”, with the dictionary saying that the changes would put “the focus on people … removing the implication of a medical diagnosis, sickness, or pathology when describing normal human behaviours and ways of being”.
It has also capitalised Black, a change that affects hundreds of entries, in what it said was “a mark of respect and recognition that’s in line with capitalising other cultures and ethnicities”. And it has added a separate entry for Black, as it refers to a person, a move that breaks with dictionary conventions to group together words that share the same origin.
“This change reflects Dictionary.com’s point of view that language entries have consequences and go beyond being simply an academic exercise,” it said.
Another major revision updates language used around suicide and addiction, with use of the phrase “commit suicide” removed and replaced with “die by suicide” or “end one’s life”, while instances of “addict” as a noun are replaced with “person addicted to” or “habitual user of”. It said the changes were intended to eliminate language that implied moral judgment or incorporated historical prejudice.
“2020 has been a year of change like never before, affecting how we live, work, interact – and how we use language,” said Jennifer Steeves-Kiss, chief executive of Dictionary.com. “Our biggest release yet represents a tireless commitment from our entire team not only to documenting how language evolves, but to ensuring our users always find the meaning they need.”
Along with the revisions, Dictionary.com has added 650 new entries, from words relating to race and ethnicity (such as Afro-Latina and Afro-Latino) to those reflecting environmental issues (such as ecoanxiety) or sexuality (such as ace, referring to asexuality). Abbreviations used on social media, such as af (“as fuck; to a great degree”), DGAF (“to not care at all; a euphemistic initialism used to indicate an indifferent or unbothered attitude, without explicit vulgarity”), and slang terms such as jabroni (“a stupid, foolish, or contemptible person; loser”) and janky (“untrustworthy; disreputable”) have also been added.
“The work of a dictionary is more than just adding new words. It’s an ongoing effort to ensure that how we define words reflects changes in language – and life,” said senior editor John Kelly. “Among our many new entries are thousands of deeper, dictionary-wide revisions that touch us on our most personal levels: how we talk about ourselves and our identities, from race to sexual orientation to mental health. Our revisions are putting people, in all their rich humanity, first, and we’re extremely proud of that.”
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So https://www.dictionary.com/browse/homosexual
adjective
Often Disparaging and Offensive. sexually attracted to members of one's own sex; gay:homosexual couples.
Often Disparaging and Offensive. of or relating to sexual desire or behavior directed toward members of one's own sex:the homosexual subculture.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gay
USAGE ALERT ABOUT GAY
The sexual orientation meaning of the word gay has become so predominant that people hesitate to use the term in its original senses of “merry, lively” and “bright or showy.” But the word's association with sexuality is not new. The word gay has had various senses dealing with sexual conduct since the 17th century. A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer, a gay house a brothel. This sexual world included gay men too, and gay as an adjective in the sexual meaning goes back at least to the late 1930s. After World War II, as social attitudes toward sexuality began to change, gay was applied openly by gay men to themselves, first as an adjective and later as a noun. It is no longer considered slang. Today, the noun often designates only gay men and is usually used as a collective plural: gays and lesbians. How do gays feel about this? But usage as a singular noun is usually perceived as insulting.
It has been argued that gay in the sense “awkward, stupid, or bad” is independent of the sexual sense, and therefore not homophobic. This argument is weakened by the fact that the sexual meaning has long been the dominant one, and thus permeates all usages of gay.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dead-white-european-male
Dead White European Male
Dead White Male
noun
a man whose importance and talents may have been exaggerated because he belonged to a historically dominant gender and ethnic group
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/whitesplain
whitesplain
[ hwahyt-spleyn, wahyt‐ ]SHOW IPA
verb (used with or without object)
(of a white person) to comment on the minority experience or explain racism to a person of color in a condescending or blaming way, as to point out accommodating behaviors that the victim of racism might have adopted to diffuse interracial conflict:I know what driving while Black is like, so don't you dare whitesplain it to me!
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/white-people-problem
white people problem
noun Slang: Usually Facetious.
a fairly minor problem, complaint, etc., associated with a relatively high standard of living; a first world problem.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gender-identity
gender identity
noun
a person's inner sense of being male or female, usually developed during early childhood as a result of parental rearing practices and societal influences and strengthened during puberty by hormonal changes.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/whitelash
whitelash
[ hwahyt-lash, wahyt‐ ]SHOW IPA
noun
a hostile or violent reaction by white people to the advances or influx of other racial or ethnic groups:a whitelash against African Americans, immigrants, and Muslims.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/white-guilt
white guilt
[ hwahyt-gilt, wahyt ]SHOW IPA
noun
the feelings of shame and remorse some white people experience when they recognize the legacy of racism and racial injustice and perceive the ways they have benefited from it.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/white-fragility
white fragility
[ hwahytfruh-jil-i-tee, wahyt ]SHOW IPA
noun
the tendency among members of the dominant white cultural group to have a defensive, wounded, angry, or dismissive response to evidence of racism.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/black-lives-matter
Black Lives Matter
[ blak-lahyvz-mat-er ]SHOW IPA
noun
a political and social movement originating among African Americans, emphasizing basic human rights and racial equality for Black people and campaigning against various forms of racism. Abbreviations: BLM, B.L.M.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/white-settler
white settler
noun
a well-off incomer to a district who takes advantage of what it has to offer without regard to the local inhabitants
