The George Floyd protests against racism and police violence sparked a surge of searches that spoke to the power and passion of the cultural moment, not the least of which were Black Lives Matter and Antifa. It seems our Word of the Year, existential , is more apt than ever. Change, no doubt, is a prevailing theme of —and change is fundamental to the work of a dictionary. This September, we have released our biggest update ever. Our tireless team has touched over 15, entries. You read that right: 15, These massive changes include:.
Many of these updates— of them, as noted—are of the sort that usually win attention: the new words that define the culture, technology, and environment of our times. Ecoanxiety , emotional support animal , MeToo , and af yes, that af are officially in the dictionary. One of the most comprehensive—and important—updates to our dictionary involves the capitalization of the word Black in reference to people.
Capitalizing Black confers the due dignity to the shared identity, culture, and history of Black people. It also aligns with the practice of using initial capital letters for many other ethnic groups and national identities, e. Not only does implementing this more respectful and consistent style impact all new entries involving the word Black moving forward, such as Afro-Latina , Afro-Latino , and Afro-Latinx , it also compelled our lexicographers to review and revise hundreds of existing entries.
In the dictionary world, separating the people-related definitions of Black from the other definitions of black is a major—and extremely rare—move. As a rule, different senses of words that share an origin, as lowercase black and uppercase Black historically do, are included under the same entry.
Dictionaries are not merely a linguistic exercise or academic enterprise. The effects are social. Do we enter new words more quickly now? The answer was so interesting that we ended up writing a series of articles on slang in the dictionary. Today, we'll begin with the obvious: How does any word get into the dictionary?
Next, we'll look at the earliest dictionaries to include slang , and our third installment will focus specifically on the Internet and the dictionary.
Click here to see the infographic that accompanies this story. Dictionaries have always been data-driven. A word gets into a dictionary when it is used by many people who all agree that it means the same thing. Use it. First, you drop the word into your conversation and writing, then others pick it up; the more its use spreads, the more likely it will be noticed by dictionary editors, or lexicographers. Reading is an important part of a lexicographer's job. Dictionary editors read actively, looking for changes in the language.
Editor's Note: This article has been revised to include the definition and text of Section The government subsequently revised its estimate, saying that 74 percent of the trees had been affected.
And furthermore, I imagine something else about this—quite unlike the old Bible—I imagine all of it periodically revised. However, I hope Jurgenson will not refuse to print a revised and improved version of the overture at some future time. By relying on citational evidence, we hope to keep our publications grounded in the details of current usage so they can calmly and dispassionately offer information about modern English.
That way, our references can speak with authority without being authoritarian. Log in Sign Up. How does a word get into a Merriam-Webster dictionary? This is one of the questions Merriam-Webster editors are most often asked. The answer is simple: usage. Tracking Word Usage To decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, Merriam-Webster editors study the language as it's used. Citations The marked passages are then input into a computer system and stored both in machine-readable form and on 3" x 5" slips of paper to create citations.
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