Merriam Webster dictionary changing definition of woman *title edited at requ of OP*

[midclegs]

Couldn't see this here - even if I'm duplicating things I'm so livid I don't care.

twitter.com/Mladydik/status/1277975543267262466?s=20

The new definition defines a transwoman as per the attached. Their definition of a trans man follows suit.

We've got to stop this.

Merriam-Webster is a US dictionary. US English is different than UK English.

'For more than 150 years, in print and now online, Merriam-Webster has been America's leading and most-trusted provider of language information.

Each month, our Web sites offer guidance to more than 40 million visitors. In print, our publications include Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (among the best-selling books in American history) and newly published dictionaries for English-language learners.

All Merriam-Webster products and services are backed by the largest team of professional dictionary editors and writers in America, and one of the largest in the world.'

Indeed, M-W is little used in the UK and not even particularly widely known here - whereas Oxford is known worldwide.

Incidentally, Oxford's definition of "transwoman" is "a male-to-female transsexual" ( www.lexico.com/definition/transwoman ). This is a somewhat more satisfactory and objective definition.

"Transwoman" is a propagandist term aimed at promulgating the idea that M-W endorse here. After all, usually if a word ends in "woman" then it names a type of women. "Transwomen are women" sounds much like a tautology than a controversial statement, and yet many older people probably don't even know what a transwoman is (for a long time I thought it meant F-to-M).

With the Oxford definition, you can see that TWAW translates to "male-to-female transsexuals are women", and the controversial nature of the statement, and the fact that one ought to have the right to debate it without being considered hateful, become so very clear.

Not much of a response from MW, alas:

'Thank you for contacting Merriam-Webster. We love engaging with our readers, but our feedback has increased so much that we regrettably cannot personally answer every note. We do look at them all, though, and if you're having an issue we need to help with, we will respond shortly.'

This is a worry. As others have mentioned, dictionaries describe how language is actually used, rather than telling readers how to use it. If lexicographers believe there are enough instances of people using trans woman to mean woman they will be obliged to change the dictionary definition, although in the OED that would even then probably mean adding a paragraph lower down (I hope).

I'm confident that if somebody carried out a large-scale poll asking the general public what transwoman and transman meant, a high percentage would get them the wrong way round. They are confusing terms and not well understood.

I know this has pretty much been said but it's worth pointing out.

MW defines transwoman as 'a woman who was identified as male at birth'.

MW defines woman as 'an adult female person'.

MW defines female as 'an individual of the sex that is typically capable of bearing young or producing eggs'.

That means MW has just erased transwomen! Transwomen, apparently, are women - females, 'of the sex capable of bearing young' - who for some reason were identified as male at birth. That means anyone who is biologically male ('an individual of the sex that is typically capable of producing small, usually motile gametes (such as sperm or spermatozoa') can't be a transwoman. The only true transwomen are biological females who were wrongly assigned male at birth!

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homosexuality

The word 'homosexuality' (now sometimes offensive)

I despair.

It's changed again?

Disparaging???

Who on earth could be offended by the word ‘homosexual’?

... don’t answer, I think we all know.

@aliasundercover

Who on earth could be offended by the word ‘homosexual’?

... don’t answer, I think we all know.

I dread to think how they define lesbian. 🙄

Their entry on "homosexual" is charming too.

now sometimes disparaging + offensive : of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to people of one's same sex : GAY

I checked out lesbian - not specifically defined as same-sex female attraction, but rather:

of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to other women or between women

Fortunately they are still defining woman as an adult female person.

Hang on, 'disparaging' has gone again. Guys, sort it out?

Women against Hate has this on her Facebook page... soooooo many commenters assuming it is "offensive" because it is "used as a slur" or that it has been changed to pander to the conservative religious types...

I'm pretty sure it's been changed because the concept of homossexuality is "offensive" to the trans lobby? But not sure people who haven't been aware of the debate will have got that!

While I've followed the debate on these forums closely enough to know that there may well be TRAs wanting to get rid of the word "homosexual" because it contains the word "sex", I also think that a certain distaste for the word "homosexual" preceded that. As long ago as 2011 the Guardian carried a column calling for the term to be abandoned www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2011/nov/18/mind-your-language-word-homosexual

It sounds like a formal medical term and it is rarely the word "gay" people use to describe themselves. The word "homosexual" has to some extent become associated in the public mind with conservative attitudes. "Gay" has become the neutral and everyday term. (In 2004, Burchfield wrote in his edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage that "homosexual" was still the term in formal contexts. But that was 16 years ago. People today don't consider "gay" to be a colloquialism. There are hardly any contexts - be it a broadsheet report, serious factual book, or court judgement - where people would be surprised to encounter the word "gay".)

In theweek.com/articles/556341/why-word-homosexual-offensive it was shown that between 1996 and 2015, US Democrat politicians had used the word "gay" 3 times as often as Republicans - whereas Republicans had used the word "homosexual" 3 times as often as Democrats had (although even Republicans were more likely to use the word "gay" than the word "homosexual").

Interesting to note - maybe this will change soon if they're in the process of updating these entries (I don't know whether people are saying that the usage note was just added recently to the word "homosexual" or not) - the word "gay" is defined as "of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romatic attraction to people of one's same sex" (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gay) - not same gender!

Gay 1b is dubious though because it suggests that gay rights automatically include transgender... (1b: "of, relating to, or intended for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, etc.") But then again that's probably that's how some Americans use the word.

Ok. I'm still suspicious. But less suspicious than I was.