Definitions: Love and Marriage

Linguist Geoff Nunberg had a great piece about how political factions use dictionary definitions in taking their stances toward gay marriage. It's a great analysis, and one that transcends the specific topic. I found of particular interest the following:

A couple of months ago, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary made some long-overdue revisions in the definitions for a bunch of gender-related words. Before then, the dictionary's definition of girlfriend in the meaning of "sweetheart" read "a man's favorite female companion," which would have precluded lesbians from having girlfriends in the romantic sense. And the old definition of love read, "That feeling of attachment which is based upon difference of sex. . . and which is the normal basis of marriage." So both words were given new definitions that would cover their use to refer to same-sex relationships.[1]

This is hardly a matter of rampant political correctness, or of giving the words a new meaning. It isn't as if the English language has ever ruled out talking about lesbians having girlfriends, much less prevented Shakespeare from describing a romantic attachment between two men with the word love. It's just that when the definitions were written, those sorts of relationships were officially invisible.

Oh, what a great point. People use language to make themselves comfortable, and set definitions to try and form the world in the way they wished it was, and not in the way it actually is. To point to "traditional" definitions is really to point to traditional prejudices and recorded wishful thinking. What axe edges are the dictionary editors grinding? So what we get is a true example of "begging the question": people take a stance based on social norms, and then use definitions created by those norms as proof that the opinion is correct. Might as well say that infant mortality is normal and "the way things should be" because in the past there was lots of infant mortality.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year

The word is out - literally. Merriam-Webster had its annual world of the year contest, the winner apparently the result of popular consensus. The winner: w00t, an expression of joy with likely origins in the gaming community. It supposedly stands for "we owned the other team." The mix of numbers and letters is deliberate, not a typo, and belongs to the hacker lexicon called l33t - leet, or elite, speak.

Merriam-Webster Rolls Out New Words

Merriam-Webster is ready to add about 100 new words to its eleventh edition Collegiate Dictionary. A number - like the Korean chaebol for a family-controlled large company, the filled Italian pasta agnolotti, India's Bollywood region, and the Latin-American soap operas called telenovelas - are American adoptions of foreign terms. But there are some unusual other ones:

• crunk - a style of Southern rap music featuring repetitive chants and rapid dance rhythms


• microgreen - a shoot of a standard salad plant (We used to call this a piece.)


• viewshed - the natural environment that is visible from one or more viewing points (What ever happened to the word view?)


• smackdown - the act of knocking down or bringing down an opponent (from professional wrestling, when defeating someone isn't enough).

I don't think a few words show a trend, but it is interesting how as a culture we do seem enamored of coming up with newer, shinier, more complex names for things that are already named. Maybe the plain experience of life isn't enough as we've become part of the grand marketing that is global society.