Hi all! I've been away for nearly two weeks, part of which was spent at the beach.Miss me? I missed you. Although there was something very restful and refreshing about not touching a computer keyboard for more than a week.
Anyway, today I learned something nifty. Merriam-Webster revised its definition of "marriage" based on the growing trend of states legalizing same-sex marriage. Previously, it had defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
The New Definition
In its Trend Watch on June 30, Merriam-Webster Online reported a spike in lookups for the word marriage following the news in New York.M-W's new definition of marriage includes a second meaning (see below). It now reads as follows:
a (1) : the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2) : the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage
The Dynamic Dictionary
It makes me happy to see dictionaries changing with the times. After all, if dictionaries were entirely prescriptive (i.e., telling us how we should use words), rather than descriptive (defining words as people actually use them), then they might still be telling us to speak in Old English.
I wonder if Merriam-Webster will one day jettison the "opposite sex" language entirely and just have one definition for marriage. Time will tell.
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