Dictionaries are traditionally slow to adapt to changing cultural norms. This year, Merriam-Webster finally added “someone who is overly sensitive” to the definition of “snowflake,” now that the term has become a cliché. It allowed “purple” to refer to areas split between Democrats and Republicans, and you now have the dictionary’s endorsement when you use “peak” to talk about “peak television.”
America’s oldest dictionary also added long-established terms, from “free solo,” after an entire documentary on that style of rock climbing came out last year, to “gig economy,” coined in 2009.
But when it comes to some terms, the dictionary doesn’t want to lag behind culture. It actually wants to force it in a particular direction.
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is “they,” the four-letter, third-person pronoun that some people use (incorrectly, my editor reminds me) in the singular to avoid referring to gender. This has become a hot-button topic in recent months. Searches for “they” jumped 313% this year. Merriam-Webster had announced in September that it would be updating its definition of “they” to include its use a “nonbinary” singular pronoun.
“They” has “been used to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary, a sense that is increasingly common in published, edited text, as well as social media, and in daily personal interactions between English speakers,” the dictionary explains.
That followed an announcement by the pop star Sam Smith that he would be “changing my pronouns” to “they” and “them.” He’s far from alone in using the pronoun this way. Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal announced in April that her 22-year-old son is “gender non-conforming,” referring to him as “they” during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
Merriam-Webster’s changing view of the pronoun has been supported by other big names in the world of words. Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at Random House and author of Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, tweeted his support for Merriam-Webster’s choice of “they” as word of the year.
In one sense, Merriam-Webster is simply following trends by adjusting the definition of “they” according to its new usage. In another, it’s jumping quickly on a trend that is just beginning, betting on this usage’s growth in popularity and taking an unmistakable ideological position on gender identity.
“They” has long been used to refer to individuals of unknown gender. Only relatively recently has it cropped up “in Twitter bios, email signatures, and conference nametags,” as the dictionary says. But it’s still quite a few paddles away from the mainstream, insofar as most people aren’t used to using “they” for a person whose gender seems evident. AP even neglected to use “they” to refer to Smith in its first story on his announcement of his “they” self-identification.
No, the specific use of “they” for people who identify as nonbinary is not yet in the American vernacular. But Merriam-Webster and other guardians of language are doing their best to put it there.
