Geoff Nunberg
“Fresh Air” commentary, May 28, 2008
A couple of months ago, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary made some long-overdue revisions in the definitions for a bunch of gender-related words. Before then, the dictionary’s definition of girlfriend in the meaning of “sweetheart” read “a man’s favorite female companion,” which would have precluded lesbians from having girlfriends in the romantic sense. And the old definition of love read, “That feeling of attachment which is based upon difference of sex. . . and which is the normal basis of marriage.” So both words were given new definitions that would cover their use to refer to same-sex relationships.[1]
This is hardly a matter of rampant political correctness, or of giving the words a new meaning. It isn’t as if the English language has ever ruled out talking about lesbians having girlfriends, much less prevented Shakespeare from describing a romantic attachment between two men with the word love. It’s just that when the definitions were written, those sorts of relationships were officially invisible.
(more. . . )
Gallery Carre
