When expansion is change
When news outlets and dictionaries lie:
Fact Check-Cambridge Dictionary expanded, not replaced its definition of “woman”
When it comes to definitions, expansion can be replacement. If you expand the definition of “apple” to include bananas, cherries, apricots, papayas, and tangerines, it’s no longer a definition of “apple.”
The Cambridge Dictionary updated its definition of the word “woman” to include a further definition that includes transgender women. However, social media users sharing the new definition mistakenly claim the dictionary replaced existing definitions of “woman” with the description.
See above. If you “expand” the definition of “woman” to include “trans woman” then the definition is no longer a definition of “woman”; you have replaced it. The social media users were not mistaken. Reuters is mistaken, the Cambridge Dictionary is mistaken.
I agree, woman is a perfectly descriptive and serviceable word for an adult human female. It’s worked for centuries. Men with fantasies need not apply, you will never be a woman. I mean ever. Get your own definitions.
They’re saying that “woman” is a polyseme. “Adult human female” is still there, but they’ve added as a separate definition, “An adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
Polysemy is cromulent enough, though obviously I think the second definition is based on a whole heap of raw bullshit. What gets me is the oh so careful tip-toeing at the end there.
So much for, “Of course they know what sex they are.” Give the activists time, and they really will replace the first definition with the second, only they won’t bother to include the bit about sex at birth and what it may or may not have have been said to be.
When even a dictionary couches its words so carefully you know you’re dealing with an Orwellian level of political manipulation.
Gee I wonder why “man” isn’t a polyseme. Such a mystery, isn’t it.
The music of Handel, with a chorus singing “Behold the man-ster Polyseme”, is going through my head at the moment.
lol
They’ve got an “identifies as” definition for “man” as well. I checked.
There’s also that old, telling polyseme for “man,” “human being.”
BTW it’s bothering me that I wrote
Instead of
Which is funnier and also grammatically correcter. Not requesting a fix, O, just felt compelled to say.
They are attempting to make official the distinction between woman[1] (adult female human) and woman[2] (a person that calls themselves a woman). At least, to the extent that dictionaries can make word meanings official. They actually don’t, as they describe rather than proscribe, but the fools they are pandering to will certainly take it that way.
At some point (if it hasn’t already), activists will demand that the “trans” part be dropped altogether. They’ll just say (and attempt to force everyone else to agree) they’re women, tout court. Many TiMs already describe themselves this way. Lots of media outlets too.
That’s the enraged rallying cry, after all – TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN.
@8 maybe…but we have seen examples of how, when a TIM is actually, inadvertently, ‘treated like a woman’ he raises holy hell. They need the distinction of being ‘trans’ as well as ‘women’. They don’t want to be actual ‘women’, in any meaningful sense of the word, they want to be special men who can do what they want. Genuine ‘trans women are women’ would completely backfire on them.
They think they’re better at being women than women are.
“Woman,” of course, is not a polyseme. That’s the whole point. It doesn’t mean both adult human female and adult human male; it means adult human female only. It’s exclusionary that way. Not all words are polysemes, to put it mildly.
What especially astonishes me are the “trans ally” women who also say this.
Same.
So trans “equality” is actually an uncharacteristic show of humility? Maybe they’re dialing it down for public consumption: “We’re the equal of any woman at being a woman.” Maybe that’s the “equality” they’re calling for? Otherwise, I have no idea what or who they’re wanting to be equal with or equal to, and the cynical use of the word is just for its superficially appeal as a buzzword, carefully chosen to cover what they’re really doing, and to lull those who will be all for “equality” without asking too many questions. Or any questions.