Pity the dictionary people

Well, Merriam-Webster fell into an awkward place.

They tweeted something cutesy and fun:

“What language rule are you willing to die on a hill for?”

Or words to that effect.

They probably hoped for something about split infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions.

Instead, they deleted the tweet after folks came back with:

“Woman” means adult human female.

 How radical and controversial…

I’d almost defend the dictionary folks here. Dictionaries merely document language, not police it. If enough folks want to use a word wrong, the dictionary’s job is to document that.

Dictionaries reflect usage.

So it’s not their fault if they’ve noticed a new way of using “men” and “women”.

That’s a reasonable argument.

It falls apart when you realise that it means they have to listen and observe common usage.

Anyway, I think we’ve won here or something, because looking up “man” and “woman” in Merriam-Webster’s site now gives you good definitions:

Woman: (1a): an adult female person

Man: (1a1): an individual human; especially : an adult male human

And none of the definitions talked about identifying as anything.

So I don’t know what those tweets were about. Maybe their social media managers haven’t read a dictionary.

Anyway, here’s a link to something with tight definitions and consistency:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

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