Sexism in the Oxford Dictionary of English
January 25, 2016 11:56 AM   Subscribe

Why does the Oxford Dictionary of English portray women as “rabid feminists” From the MEDIUM article: "The Oxford Dictionary of English is the default dictionary on Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. Anyone using a Mac, an iPad, or iPhone will get definitions from this dictionary. So why is it filled with explicitly sexist usage examples?"

The GUARDIAN: Sexism row prompts Oxford Dictionaries to review language used in definitions

Jezebel weighs in: Oxford Dictionary Realizes Illustrating 'Rabid' With 'Feminist' Isn't the Smartest Move

Oxford Dictionaries Twitter Feed "Btw, 'rabid' isn't always negative, and our example sentences come from real-world use and aren't definitions: http://bit.ly/1jDWQLf"
posted by pjsky (65 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think rabid is, actually, pretty much always negative. Are they saying they're referring to the good kind of rabies?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:57 AM on January 25, 2016 [67 favorites]


our example sentences come from real-world use

The problem, you have identified it.
posted by Etrigan at 11:59 AM on January 25, 2016 [44 favorites]


This is one of those things that is so awful yet also so completely and utterly unsurprising that all I can do is laugh while feeling sad. HA HA HA LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAA
posted by phunniemee at 12:01 PM on January 25, 2016 [24 favorites]


I had never even thought of this, but yeah, change that shit Oxford. Should be embarrassed it was ever in there.
posted by emjaybee at 12:01 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


All of the lexicographers I know believe that editorial control is a responsibility--so the defenses on twitter really surprise me. Reporting on racism, sexism, etc in language use doesn't mean perpetuating it by passing along examples without thought or comment.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:13 PM on January 25, 2016 [10 favorites]


I think rabid is, actually, pretty much always negative. Are they saying they're referring to the good kind of rabies?

Rabid: Adj. - "having or proceeding from an extreme or fanatical support of or belief in something"

Rabid fandom isn't necessarily contagious, and such rabid fans aren't necessarily dangerous. So there's that.

But not much else.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:16 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


There are also ways to note when a usage is offensive, if you need to include an offensive usage.

Honestly, it sounds like a big part of the problem is that they let someone clueless be in charge of the Twitter account. Otherwise, they could have taken some time, thought it over, and decided to make some changes without creating a big internet shitstorm.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:17 PM on January 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


So, dictionary people, is the "Oxford Dictionary of English" any good? It seems like a haphazard attempt to confuse people by leveraging their familiarity with the OED. This automatically makes me assume it's probably a hacky mess, but I could be wrong.

I looked at the online version, and none of their use examples are referenced, so it's not clear that they're actually quoted from real-world use (as in the OED) or just manufactured for the purposes of the dictionary. Certainly "a rabid feminist" is not significant enough a quotation from any original source to provide meaningful context.

For what it's worth, the OED does have a similar usage example: "1984 A. Oakley Taking it like Woman (1985) 11 Perhaps the entire staff of the school were rabid feminists but if so we did not know, and we certainly weren't." This is the seventh of nine examples given.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:17 PM on January 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


the defenses on twitter really surprise me

People often get defensive when they feel like they're being attacked, even on topics which they would otherwise not support. People aren't always as logical as we'd like to be.

And that response could have been more knee-jerk than intended, lacking sufficient consideration as to how it sounded.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:18 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I guess, but if you're in charge of a corporate Twitter account, it's kind of your job not to fly off the handle even if you feel attacked or defensive.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:19 PM on January 25, 2016 [19 favorites]


I don't know why the sheep tweet in this link is making me laugh so hard. I mean, yes I do, it's exactly the laugh-otherwise-you'll-cry effect phunniemee is talking about, but there's just something about that picture.

This is kind of only tangentially related (to sexism in the hallowed halls of language nerdery, to pronoun choice, and to the idea of rabid/militant feminists), but one of my friends recently informed me that her boyfriend (25, tech dude, has never spoken two words to me ever) thought I was a "militant feminist" and joked (I hope? maybe not? ugh) that he was worried about her spending time with me. Why? Because he overheard me talking about my editing work, and about fixing gendered pronoun usage. This is a very basic function of my job. I'm not 100% sure I remember the conversation in question and I definitely don't remember how I phrased it (it may have included such strident phrases as "gender-neutral pronouns" or "sexist language"), but if I'm thinking of the right one, it was a book about baking cakes and there was a lot of stuff in the intro about "when a home baker bakes a cake, these are the tools she reaches for in her kitchen" and etc. The design was very pink and girly and I talked about wanting to change pronouns to "he or she" or rewrite in a gender-neutral way, but the pages were already laid out and it's hard to do that sort of thing without getting repetitive and my boss was breathing down my neck and I ultimately decided to let it go. But because I thought for a few minutes about the possibility that a man might want to bake a cake, some jackass thinks I'm a militant feminist and doesn't want his girlfriend hanging out with me lest I convince her to castrate him or something. I don't know, it really upset me a lot more than it should - this stuff is so baked in (ha) to our language and simply pointing it out is seen as such a radical, rabid act.
posted by sunset in snow country at 12:23 PM on January 25, 2016 [66 favorites]


Man I came expecting this to be overwrought but no it's just bullshit sexism all around.
posted by corb at 12:28 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


So, dictionary people, is the "Oxford Dictionary of English" any good?
I honestly couldn't say, but the important thing is that this dictionary is the default dictionary on Macs, iPads, and iPhones. So whether or not it is your dictionary of choice, it is the one most available to a whole lot of people and it probably shouldn't be quite so bloody sexist. Remember "rabid feminist" is just one of the examples cited in the article(s).
posted by pjsky at 12:34 PM on January 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


JFC, Google.
posted by sukeban at 12:40 PM on January 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


So, dictionary people, is the "Oxford Dictionary of English" any good?

It starts off pretty strong, but it starts to get slow in the middle and then is completely tiresome by about 2/3 of the way through. I couldn't finish it.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:43 PM on January 25, 2016 [76 favorites]


I was really expecting the story here to be digital culture's overreliance on outdated source materials because they're the ones in the public domain, a la 1911 Britannica, but instead the story is that OUP's low-cost digital product is awful. Interesting.
posted by RogerB at 12:44 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


It starts off pretty strong, but it starts to get slow in the middle and then is completely tiresome by about 2/3 of the way through.

If "pretty strong" is at the start of the dictionary, I think I see a bigger problem here.
posted by Etrigan at 12:46 PM on January 25, 2016 [13 favorites]


Wasn't this one of Rush Limbaugh's malapropisms where he took the common radical feminist and perved it into rabid feminist?

Does the OED have feminazi in it?
posted by bukvich at 12:51 PM on January 25, 2016


Sunset, I hope your friend runs far away from that douche. Sheesh.

"Militant feminist" is such an interesting phrase; it implies, what...military action? Some sort of violence? Mobs of angry women?

But why would we need to use actual violence, when grown men worry about us castrating them simply by asking questions about gender representation?
posted by emjaybee at 12:59 PM on January 25, 2016 [10 favorites]


Also, the examples in the medium article are galling and are totally sexist and they need to fix that shit. While the dictionary obviously isn't the same thing as a newspaper, it is ultimately an arbiter of language and it should take responsibility for how it disseminates language, because language is powerful, and there can't be real progress towards necessary change if the language remains mired in archaic tropes. Stay with me here, but I propose that the publishers of the Oxford Dictionary of English should adhere to the principles of journalistic ethics. When you look at those examples, it's clear that they've violated all five. That they're doubling-down on Twitter is really gross.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:00 PM on January 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


The Oxford Dictionary of English is completely distinct from the Oxford English Dictionary.
posted by clockzero at 1:01 PM on January 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


... it is ultimately an arbiter of language...

It's a descriptor of language!
posted by mr_roboto at 1:08 PM on January 25, 2016 [7 favorites]


The average feminist may not qualify as rabid, but the back-and-forth fighting triggered by a single "maybe change that?" certainly does. I support replacing the example with "a rabid pack of Tweeters".

It's crazy that Twitter has the power to magnify 140 characters into multiple news articles, when the original dictionary entry would work best as a single example in a substantial article about feminism.
posted by Rangi at 1:16 PM on January 25, 2016



So, dictionary people, is the "Oxford Dictionary of English" any good?

It starts off pretty strong, but it starts to get slow in the middle and then is completely tiresome by about 2/3 of the way through. I couldn't finish it.



SPOILER ALERT: The zythum did it.
posted by DiscountDeity at 1:37 PM on January 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


This sort of thing was an integral part of my class this summer on the History of Spanish Dictionaries. It's pretty amazing how something as basic and (one would think) non-ideological as a definition can be loaded with biases. The words we looked the most at were:

1) "conservador" (conservative), which in more conservative dictionaries was defined as being a point of view "favorable to stability and adherence to traditional values", while more liberal dictionaries defined it as "totally opposed to any changes in society".
2) "Fácil" (easy) had the definition of "a woman of light morals".
3) "gozar" (to enjoy) had the definition of "to have sexual relations with a woman".

The good news was that "fácil" and "gozar" were changed in newer editions of the DRAE to "a person of light morals" and "to have sexual relations with another person".
posted by chainsofreedom at 1:49 PM on January 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


For comparison here are the same definitions from Websters 1913 some are identical to the modern Oxford dictionary of English and some are quite different:

Rabid
1. Furious; raging; extremely violent.

Shrill
A shrill sound. [Obs.] --Spenser.

Break we our pipes, that shrilledloud as lark.--Spenser.
No sounds were heard but of the shrilling cock.--Goldsmith.
His voice shrilled with passion. --L. Wallace.


Psyche
1. (Class Myth.) A lovely maiden, daughter of a king and mistress of Eros, or Cupid. She is regarded as the personification of the soul.
2. The soul; the vital principle; the mind.


Doctor
1. A teacher; one skilled in a profession, or branch of knowledge learned man.

research
the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions: the group carries out research in geochemistry | medical research | he prefaces his study with a useful summary of his own researches.

housework
regular work done in housekeeping, especially cleaning and tidying. she still does all the housework.

Grating
That grates; making a harsh sound; harsh.

Nag
To tease in a petty way; to scold habitually; to annoy; to fret pertinaciously. [Colloq.] `She never nagged.' --J.Ingelow.

Nagging, a.
Fault-finding; teasing; persistently annoying; as, a nagging toothache.

Promiscuous
1. Consisting of individuals united in a body or mass without order; mingled; confused; undistinguished; as, a promiscuous crowd or mass.
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot.--Pope.
2. Distributed or applied without order or discrimination; not restricted to an individual; common; indiscriminate; as, promiscuous love or intercourse.

posted by Lanark at 1:51 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


The RAE is still heroically determined to resist feminist forces and crazy stuff like inclusive language, tho.
posted by sukeban at 1:51 PM on January 25, 2016


it was a book about baking cakes and there was a lot of stuff in the intro about "when a home baker bakes a cake, these are the tools she reaches for in her kitchen"

There's a lot of this in kids books, too. You really have to watch for it. We got several books as hand-me-downs and I don't want to dump them, but I do change some words as I read. Off the top of my head, one labels kitchen bowls as "Mommy's bowls" and one Elmo book talks about Elmo "helping mommy by sweeping the floor" (something like that). Ugh, it's really infuriating. And these are current books, not from the 1950s or anything.
posted by JenMarie at 1:52 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mod note: One comment deleted; maybe make your point again without the confusing huge textdump?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:03 PM on January 25, 2016


Man I came expecting this to be overwrought but no it's just bullshit sexism all around.

Yes. Sometimes I think people read to much into something. This isn’t one of those cases. This is just completely fucking ridiculous.
posted by bongo_x at 2:23 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


So if the usage cite was "Rabid fan", it would be acceptable in ways that "Rabid feminist" isn't? How about "Rabid socialist" or "Rabid fascist"?

As has been said, the way dictionaries like the OED work is by describing the use of language, not pre- or proscribing it. Which is not to deny responsibility on the lexicographers to avoid systematic bias - quite the opposite - or to gainsay that dictionaries do affect the language they describe, but I've seen 'rabid feminist' far more often than I have most other similar constructions. Perhaps I'm more sensitive to that, or perhaps it really is the most common use of the word in that way, but I think you'd be hard pushed to claim it was an inaccurate or technically inappropriate cite..

Bullshit sexism is very common, and it is carried by language. Dictionaries are technical books about language. I think the core of this issue is whether "Rabid feminist" is a good technical cite and if it is, whether it's an obscenity, Dictionaries have mechanisms for marking that
posted by Devonian at 2:43 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Oxford Dictionary of English is completely distinct from the Oxford English Dictionary.

They're distinct, but not completely distinct. They're both produced by the same organization, Oxford University Press.
posted by grouse at 2:49 PM on January 25, 2016


They're distinct, but not completely distinct. They're both produced by the same organization, Oxford University Press.

They're completely distinct in the sense that the Oxford Dictionary of English's content is not based upon the OED. They're two different dictionaries produced by the same organization, yes.
posted by clockzero at 3:02 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's crazy that Twitter has the power to magnify 140 characters into multiple news articles, when the original dictionary entry would work best as a single example in a substantial article about feminism.

Would you have read it?
Would it have effected change?
posted by sebastienbailard at 3:02 PM on January 25, 2016


The behavior on display by Oxford is appalling. The embedded sexism in the definitions is appalling. Apple and Google may wish to save face by applying pressure as they can because this is just so damned pervasive and caustic.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 3:06 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's a descriptor of language!

But also an authority figure on language, since (at least in the old days) the dictionary was where you went to learn what a word meant. If every time someone goes to look up a word in the dictionary and the usage example is unnecessarily gendered or outright sexist, that has a cumulative effect on the many, many dictionary users out there and the way they think about things or look at the world. I'm not saying it should have an effect, but I also don't think you can argue that it doesn't.
posted by mudpuppie at 3:10 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also, there's not any requirement that the illustrative example in the dictionary be the most common usage. It should be an illustrative usage. If people are distracted by sexism or other bias in your example, then it's probably not the best example. You should choose something that will allow readers to focus on the word that they are looking up, not the things surrounding the word.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:13 PM on January 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


So if the usage cite was "Rabid fan", it would be acceptable in ways that "Rabid feminist" isn't? How about "Rabid socialist" or "Rabid fascist"?


I'm losing patience with "fan" (diminutive for fanatic) being an example as it's tautological. And guesstimating "what you've heard" is ludicrous. What's interesting (to me) is the sense ranking is not the first in other sources such as Webster's.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 3:16 PM on January 25, 2016


I could swear that I read somewhere that fan was actually not short for fanatic but instead had something to do with theater seating or something like that.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:17 PM on January 25, 2016


Swear away...my bones were made with Random House, and I swear by them.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 3:19 PM on January 25, 2016


Hmmm. I take it back. The OED says that fan is short for fanatic. "Rabid supporter" seems like it would do.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:24 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was disagreeing with Devonian...I think the core of this issue is whether "Rabid feminist" is a good technical cite and if it is, whether it's an obscenity, Dictionaries have mechanisms for marking that...

No, they're historically very bad at it, and obscenity isn't a simple concept and I think you're hand-waving. It's sexism and it's contextual, on the page and likely in the "meetings", and I'm glad it's getting called out.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 3:33 PM on January 25, 2016


They're completely distinct in the sense that the Oxford Dictionary of English's content is not based upon the OED.

But they are both based on the Oxford English Corpus.
posted by grouse at 3:41 PM on January 25, 2016


.@OxfordWords The word you're thinking of as a "positive" is "avid". Sounds like, but isn't, "rabid", which is negative as hell.

.@OxfordWords it's kinda funny how you can't tell connotation from denotation when that's your whole job.


----

from a woman, @nordettewrites: @OmanReagan I'm mpressed you've drawn attention 2 this issue. When I brought up in 2014, only @anildash responded.

@OmanReagan now has a pinned tweet: Media, please put women's voices first, contact: @nordettewrites, @sarahshulist, @anthrocharya. See Update #4 here [which is just the medium article in the fpp]
posted by twist my arm at 3:48 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm losing patience with "fan" (diminutive for fanatic) being an example as it's tautological.

But in practice, fan does not mean fanatic. If someone says they are a "fan" of a TV show, we don't think of them as "filled with excessive and single-minded zeal" or "obsessively concerned with something" (to use what I guess are the ODE's definitions of fanatical). It just means they like it.

So fan might be derived from fanatical, but it hardly means the same thing. Rabid or fanatical seem like reasonable modifiers for fan, given that at base fan is not an extreme descriptor.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:02 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


If someone says they are a "fan" of a TV show, we don't think of them as "filled with excessive and single-minded zeal" or "obsessively concerned with something" (to use what I guess are the ODE's definitions of fanatical).

Who's we? But, yes, I've tracked the usage and fan has come to be used to mean self-identification based on its use for an enthusiasm that does allow for modification in terms of degree. Yet, fanatical fan doesn't find usage. And why?
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:15 PM on January 25, 2016


If someone says they are a "fan" of a TV show, we don't think of them as "filled with excessive and single-minded zeal" or "obsessively concerned with something"

it's not that i disagree with you so much as can i introduce you to a little site called tumblr
posted by twist my arm at 4:16 PM on January 25, 2016 [10 favorites]


Who's we?

I guess I've just always seen it that way? Maybe its just me, but I feel like almost everyone I know uses the term fan as "I like this" not as in "I'm completely obsessed by this". Is that really an unusual thing? Whatever derivation it may have had, there is no real connection between how I hear fan being used and how I hear fanatical being used. But again, I haven't studied it extensively and maybe I live in a weird language bubble.

Yet, fanatical fan doesn't find usage. And why?

Well, "fanatical fan" has quite a few google hits, although "rabid fan" is 10x more popular.

t's not that i disagree with you so much as can i introduce you to a little site called tumblr

Well, _some_ fans are obviously like that :)
posted by thefoxgod at 5:04 PM on January 25, 2016


Crazy how he tweeted that on the 20th and it's now the 25th and they still haven't changed that one example. I mean, I get there's been a weekend and they said they're going to review it and everything; but really, how long does it take to change a fucking word example from "rabid feminist" to "rabid [something neutral]"? It's not like they need to review the whole dictionary for biased examples (although they should do that too), it's not like there aren't reasonable alternatives they could use, it's not even like they're changing the actual definition. It's the usage example. It's not a major thing. I mean ffs, do it as an act of good faith to redeem yourself after those tweets, at the very least.
posted by triggerfinger at 5:33 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Btw, 'rabid' isn't always negative, and our example sentences come from real-world use and aren't definitions"

Oxfordsplaining?
posted by symbioid at 6:17 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


The thing that gets me about the rabid-as-in-fanatical definition of the word being the first one used in this Oxford dictionary, apart from the bizarre nature of "rabid feminist" being the example for that definition, is that it seems like the most literal definition of rabid is the one involving rabies. Why wouldn't that be the first definition? Chintzy dictionary is chintzy.
posted by limeonaire at 6:30 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Why wouldn't that be the first definition?

Etymology. Its application to dogs came after its cognate rave.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:13 PM on January 25, 2016


Otherwise, they could have taken some time, thought it over, and decided to make some changes without creating a big internet shitstorm.

You are of course, assuming that creating a big internet shitstorm isn't doing wonders for their Twitter metrics.
posted by pwnguin at 7:35 PM on January 25, 2016


People often get defensive when they feel like they're being attacked, even on topics which they would otherwise not support. People aren't always as logical as we'd like to be.

Especially when anonymous. Does anyone really think that "Oxford Dictionary of English" anonymous twitter cowards would have behaved the same way if they'd been required to identify themselves?
posted by effbot at 7:39 PM on January 25, 2016


Yet, fanatical fan doesn't find usage. And why?

I'd like to introduce you to this little phenomenon in language that goes by the name "collocation"...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:52 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


it seems like the most literal definition of rabid is the one involving rabies.

But if you make a dictionary, you have to make decisions about the social context your readers are in. And the only time I've ever come across a description of a rabid animal, I don't know if the word was even used (in To Kill A Mockingbird). Making a decision to say that the most salient collocation for rabid is feminist is a choice that serves the desires of a market: the one that some sexist decision makers believed to be most important. The backlash is people disagreeing. And it seems to have worked.
posted by ambrosen at 11:59 PM on January 25, 2016


But if you make a dictionary, you have to make decisions about the social context your readers are in.

This seems like a tall order for the entirety of the English-speaking world, doesn't it? What social context, exactly, is that?
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 1:49 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Rabid fandom isn't necessarily contagious, and such rabid fans aren't necessarily dangerous. So there's that.

But it still reads like a negative value judgement.
posted by Dysk at 1:52 AM on January 26, 2016


What social context, exactly, is that?
Patriarchy?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:57 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


The good news was that "fácil" and "gozar" were changed in newer editions of the DRAE to "a person of light morals" and "to have sexual relations with another person".

That's really interesting to me. Is that how the words are actually used? Or is the DRAE being mildly (and justly!) prescriptivist?


According to teh Googles:

"mujer fácil" - 85,300 hits
"hombre fácil" - 40,900 hits (although the preferred term for a "player" in Spanish is "facilote")
"persona fácil" - 40,100 hits

Personally I would have no linguistic problem calling either a man or a woman "fácil".

Google again:

"gozar de una mujer" - 313,000 hits
"gozar de un hombre" - 524,000 hits (A lot of these seem to be porn or personal ads, written by guys describing a woman)
"gozar de una persona" - 324,000 hits

I would never use any of these collocations because they seem really old and stuffy anyway.


The take away in class was that these sorts of changes were mildly prescriptivist and that change was coming slowly, as the vast majority of members of the RAE are not only dudes, but conservative dudes, and have been so throughout history. And a lot of these changes are only happening in definitions where the words themselves could refer equally to men or women. If both men and women can be "easy", then why NOT just have the definition refer to a "person"?

Other changes are harder to come by, mostly in examples of completely unrelated words. One example is in the examples for "precioso", which means "precious" or sometimes "pretty". The examples for the "pretty" definition are: Esta mujer es preciosa. Aquel niño es precioso. Apart from being just bad examples - how do these help us with usage or understanding, exactly? - why do the examples state that a woman and a child are beautiful? Is that really necessary? But changing something like an "unrelated" example to be less stereotypical has been more of a difficult battle, historically.
posted by chainsofreedom at 4:13 AM on January 26, 2016


Linguist Debbie Cameron writes about this, saying in part:
Their examples, they say, are authentic: every phrase or sentence used to illustrate every entry was actually written by a real person in a real context. Dictionaries just describe usage, they don’t judge it, and they certainly don’t censor it. So, don’t shoot the messenger: don’t accuse lexicographers of sexism when they’re only documenting the sexism that exists in the wider world.

Fair point, or lame excuse? I’d say, a bit of both, but more the latter than the former. As Tom Freeman remarked on his Stroppy Editor blog, ‘even if a sentence isn’t theirs, they’ve still made the decision to use it’. And they can’t really argue that they didn’t have other options. The illustrative examples used in contemporary dictionaries come from very large collections of texts—Oxford’s corpus contains over two and a half billion words—so there isn’t a shortage of authentic examples to choose from.
In June of 2015, she also wrote a brief history of feminist critiques of and responses to dictionaries. In the section on "Sexism in illustrative quotations," which is most relevant to the OP, she writes:
A student of mine who did a project on this topic found that one of the dictionaries she analysed had a pattern of alternating between male and female references in illustrative quotations: this may have been meant to ensure gender ‘balance’, but the effect was almost comically sexist, as though the examples had been chosen by Benny Hill. In its entry for the verb slip, for instance, the dictionary offered ‘he slipped on his shoes and went outside’ followed by ‘she slipped out of her dress’. Another classic, illustrating the verb mop, had ‘he took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow’ alongside ‘the chairwoman had just mopped the linoleum that covered the stairs’.
The issues of 'shrill,' 'rabid,' and the like are part of the known problem of women's representation in dictionaries, which feminists have been actively working against since at least the 1970s. Contrary to popular opinion, dictionaries are far from neutral descriptor of language - instead they represent selections of natural language that have been deemed worthy of inclusion in an authoritative reference book.

A non-gendered example of a dictionary's authority that pops to mind is 'literally,' which now carries the alternate definition of 'figuratively' in some dictionaries. Even though this is an extremely common usage of 'literally,' many people did not care for the alternate defintion being included in the dictionary. If the dictionary were merely descriptive, there would be no controversy over the inclusion, but because the dictionary is actually normative (eg, it tells us how to spell and use words properly), the inclusion of the alternate definition now allows the 'bad' kind of usage to have some rhetorical heft behind it.

(See also the 'ain't' wars of my elementary and junior high school years. IF 'AIN'T' AIN'T A WORD, WHY IS IT IN THE DICTIONARY, MRS. MARTIN??)
posted by palindromic at 8:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


The DRAE tends to be prescriptivist when it persists in adapting English words to Spanish ortography with ridiculous results that nobody uses, like the justly forgotten "cederrón" (CD-ROM) or "güisqui" (whiskey/ whisky, and don't tell them that there is a difference).

Note also that the definition is shitty in the extreme: "Alcoholic liquor obtained from the juice of some plants, distilling an amylaceous compound in a state of fermentation". Thanks, académicos, that sure helps.
posted by sukeban at 8:56 AM on January 26, 2016


* grain, not juice
posted by sukeban at 9:04 AM on January 26, 2016


Unsurprisingly, the most well respected Dutch dictionary has similar issues (article in Dutch). According to the editor in chief: As a dictionary it is our primary task to describe words. Political correctness has nothing to do with that. He does say that people can report weird or sexist usage examples and that they will change it if they agree. But then again, he doesn't think that the sentence "that woman is an unbearable creature" is problematic, because it doesn't say that all women are unbearable creatures, and he has a wife and daughter and they are not unbearable creatures.
posted by blub at 9:20 AM on January 26, 2016


Someone found this one in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary:
Glaze (verb): [intransitive] glaze (over) if a person’s eyes glaze or glaze over, the person begins to look bored or tired
A lot of people's eyes glaze over if you say you are a feminist.
Honestly, this really doesn't look good for Oxford.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:07 AM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]


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