‘Words can come and go in a language, but those that show staying power and increasing use need to be recorded and described…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In the lead-up to next year’s presidential election, Democrats have added a new ally to the “resistance”: Merriam–Webster’s dictionary.
It announced Tuesday that it had formally added 533 new words for the month of September, codifying the once-idiomatic expressions into the American vernacular.
Hi.
We have something to tell you.
🎉📚We just added more than 530 new words to the dictionary!🎉📚https://t.co/XPpabY26UV
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) September 17, 2019
“New words are a happy fact of life for a living language, and taking careful stock of the words that we use is an important part of the work of dictionary editors,” it said in the announcement on its website. “Words can come and go in a language, but those that show staying power and increasing use need to be recorded and described. In other words: they need definitions.”
More than a few of them, however, seem to tie directly to the Left’s political agenda, including: “red flag law,” “they” (as a non-binary gender pronoun), “inclusive” (as in, accommodating to minorities), “colorism” and “Bechdel test” (i.e. an arbitrary standard devised for gender equity in movies, etc.).
The additions appear to be part of a biannual process—with an April update adding other terms like “gender nonconforming,” “bottom surgery” (i.e. the surgical alteration of a transgender person’s genitals) and “vulture capitalism.”
In fairness, the dictionary also added this year a handful of conservative-friendly terms, such as “snowflake” and “deep state.”
Leftist thought-leaders like Saul Alinsky long emphasized the importance of communication to a political agenda, and liberals have often sought to use the semantics of language itself to steer discussion and debate.
Not surprisingly, they’ve received help from academics and media figures—be it the dubiously skewed rules of the Associated Press Stylebook that many journalists abide by or the annual list of “banished words” promoted by Lake Superior State University.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez applauded some of the new Merriam–Webster additions in a tweet following their announcement.
What great news!
Shout out to all our non-binary fam in the world, and the activists who’ve worked hard to let us celebrate the full spectrum of humanity 🏳️🌈 https://t.co/BkpdVPleNe
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 18, 2019
Many of the top responses on her tweet contended that the linguistic concept of “non-binary” pronouns—suggesting that gender is a mere social construct—pitted it against the scientific understanding that gender is established on a chromosomal level.
Breitbart noted that the push for multiple genders, once considered absurd, continues to gain traction as left-wing activists wage a public-pressure campaign.
“The use of ‘nonbinary’ and ‘gender-neutral’ pronouns has been heavily advocated by the left, resulting in a number of states — like Pennsylvania—moving to offer an “X” option on driver’s licenses,” it said.
“Additionally, states like New Jersey moved to allow a nonbinary option on birth certificates, and D.C. schools have embraced a nonbinary option as well.”
The Associated Press also added “they” as a singular pronoun into its Stylebook, while a BBC children’s education program shockingly asserted that there are more than 100 gender identities.
The acceptance of “they” as a singular pronoun in connection with transgenderism poses a dilemma for grammarians and others who have long corrected its use in a different context, referring to a person whose gender was unspecified but was not necessarily on the LGBT spectrum.