The left would like a word – all of them, in fact
Merriam-Webster’s recent word play is part of a larger leftist strategy to either make up new words or redefine existing terms to make them fit the liberal narrative.
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2024 is "polarization," which it defines as "division into two sharply distinct opposites." (The word beat out "brain rot," but one wonders if it did so among dictionary staff.)
In reality, it’s been the word of the year since at least 2016, when President-elect Trump won the first time and the left went nuts.
The lefty staff in dictionary land couldn’t handle being Trumped and started playing word games almost immediately after his victory. Even NPR noted in 2017 that, "The Merriam-Webster Dictionary Has Been Trolling Trump On Twitter For Months."
The company’s word play is part of a larger leftist strategy to either make up new words or redefine existing terms to make them fit the liberal narrative. We’ve seen repeated examples in the last several years – "birthing person," "Latinx" and, the latest, "womyn."
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The Scripps National Spelling Bee, D-Embarrassment, released a third-grade word list for its 100th anniversary contest. And "womyn" is included as an acceptable alternate spelling for the real word, women. Naturally, according to a Scripps spokesperson, "All of the words used in the Scripps National Spelling Bee program are pulled from our official dictionary, Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary."
Consider me shocked. (Adjective: stricken with sudden mental or emotional disturbance.) But that’s really just propaganda. Even the lefty Urban Dictionary describes the word "womyn" as, "a term used by feminists who feel that having the word ‘man’ in the word ‘woman’ makes women a subset of men." (Scripps also approved "bazar" as an alternative to bazaar, which is just bizarre.)
Even more controversial than that spin is the attempt to eliminate mothers from our language, to appease transgender extremists. In July 2022, the NEA, the unhinged union of teachers who hate America, considered changing the language. They wanted to ditch the word "mother" and swap it out for "birthing parent." "Father" was supposed to change to "non-birthing parent." That’s because actual parents – both mothers and fathers – don’t like what NEA wants to do to their kids.
That plan failed. Even the NEA must have realized how insane it was.
One month later, the AP Stylebook decided that "phrases like ‘pregnant people’ or ‘people seeking abortions’ are acceptable when you want to be inclusive of people who have those experiences but do not identify as women."
That and all sorts of other kookiness has been embraced by the so-called sciences. Everything from "chestfeeding" instead of breastfeeding to urging staff to "avoid unnecessarily gendered language" is available on the NIH website. Employees should "use everyone or all instead of men and women and distinguished guests or folks instead of ladies and gentlemen." NIH tries to put these words in someone else’s mouth and gives instructions on its site with a prominent link to the AP Stylebook.
The liberal media defended this nonsense or advocated for it. And still do. CNN wrote, "The case for saying ‘pregnant people’ and other gender-inclusive phrases." The gender-inclusive phrase the story mentioned was "penis owners." (You have to write your own jokes for this one. I’ve written a few and deleted them because I like being employed.) The network ran that article in May 2024.
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You might think the left would tire of such empty words, but that’s just not the case. Look at the ridiculous word Latinx. Liberals created it because they hate that Spanish has male and female gendered words, so they wanted a gender-neutral term for people descended from Spain or Latin America. But despite years of effort, Pew Research reported in September that "4% of Latino adults say they have used Latinx to describe themselves, little changed from the 3% who said the same in 2019."
Instead of giving up, lefties simply try a new bogus term. In April, Axios wrote that, "Latine is the new Latinx." That’s like saying Vice President Kamala Harris is the new Michael Dukakis. It’s not especially complimentary to either side of the comparison.
The article claimed, "‘Latine,’ a gender-neutral way to describe or refer to people with Latino origins, is surging in popularity on university campuses, in museums, and among researchers and media."
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Not one of those groups it mentions is actually Hispanic or Latino. Every single one of them is just another elite, lefty ivory tower. So, who do they cite as an expert? Monica Trasandes, "director for Spanish language media and representation at GLAAD" – The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Talk about not being able to read a room, an election or even a dictionary.
And, ironically, the article itself ran in Axios Latino. Not Axios Latine or Latinx.
The left’s push to use bad words makes me think of how wonderful word wonk Susie Dent might describe it. She calls herself, "That woman in Dictionary Corner" and regularly posts obscure terms from centuries past. One of her words of the day from August was, "‘Podsnappian’ (from Charles Dickens): blinkered, self-congratulatory, and convinced that everyone else should see things the way you do."
That sounds like the last word to me. It aptly describes the grammar goons on the left.
