Say “Goodbye” to the words “homosexual” and “homosexuality” on Dictionary.com.
In one of the largest updates the site has ever experienced, Dictionary.com has altered or added more than 15,000 words on its database. With the very chaotic and overloaded year of 2020, the website and dictionary, which received an average of 41 million visits in the past six months, decided to update itself. This includes adding words like jabroni, MAGA, and GOAT. The website also removed some words like homosexuality or homosexual.
Previously, Dictionary.com referenced homosexual or homosexuality for words associated with sexual orientation. Now, those words have been replaced with gay, gay man, gay woman, or gay sexual orientation. This then impacted over 50 entries. Dictionary.com made these changes under the guidance of GLAAD and APA guidelines.
“The previously used terms, homosexual and homosexuality, originated as clinical language, and dictionaries have historically perceived such language as scientific and unbiased,” the site wrote in an update post to explain the change. “But homosexual and homosexuality are now associated with pathology, mental illness, and criminality, and so imply that being gay—a normal way of being—is sick, diseased, or wrong.”
That’s not all, however, as words like bisexual and pansexual were updated to show that they are not only romantic or sexual attractions. The new definitions include the fact that bisexuality and pansexuality can involve emotional attraction too.
“We have also revised how we define words that use -sexual (bisexual, pansexual, etc.),” the website explained. “Our definitions have updated the phrasing of “romantically or sexually attracted to” to “romantically, emotionally, or sexually attracted to.” For instance, our primary definition of bisexual is now: “noting or relating to a person who is romantically, emotionally, or sexually attracted to both men and women, or to people of various gender identities.”
Then other terms such as deadname, gender-inclusive, biromantic, and trans+ were added.
Again, this massive update to Dictionary.com is initially due to the expanse of the language used during the overpacked year of 2020. From protests to the pandemic, many new terms have popped up in the popular vernacular.
“The unprecedented events of 2020, from the pandemic to the [George Floyd/Black Lives Matter] protests, have profoundly changed our lives—and language,” wrote the website.
The website then added, “COVID-19 rapidly introduced an array of new and newly prominent technical terms to our everyday vocabularies, including asymptomatic, viral load, and social distance.”
“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,” they continued. “Not the least of which were Black Lives Matter and Antifa.”
We’re happy to see that Dictionary.com is not only willing to but is actively following the changing times.
Source: The Hill
