Merriam-Webster Redefines “They” For Its 2019 Word Of The Year

Last week, Merriam-Webster Dictionary announced its 2019 Word of the Year.  The word?  They.

According to the dictionary’s website:

Our Word of the Year for 2019 is they.  It reflects a surprising fact: even a basic term – a personal pronoun – can rise to the top of our data.  Although our lookups are often driven by events in the news, the dictionary is also a primary resource for information about language itself, and the shifting use of they has been the subject of increasing study and commentary in recent years.  Lookups for they increased by 313% in 2019 over the previous year.

It’s not actually that surprising that a basic term like “they” would be increasingly searched in 2019 – especially since Merriam-Webster “updated” the definition of “they” in September.  Definitions of words can change over time, but we live in an era of rapidly changing definitions as the left increasingly tries to control and reshape language to fit their agenda.  People are confused and are no longer sure what basic words mean.

This particularly change is all about the LGBT movement:

English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like everyone or someone, and as a consequence they has been used for this purpose for over 600 years.

More recently, though, they has also 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 nd in daily personal interactions between English speakers.  There’s no doubt that its use is established in the English language, which is why it was added to the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary this past September.

Of course.  Instead of dealing with the reality of biology, we pander to the delusions of a loud and militant minority.  Instead of relying on SCIENCE and the FACT that there are two genders, even the DICTIONARY is bending to the almighty LGBT lobby.

I find this absolutely infuriating.  We already have a serious inability to communicate with opposing viewpoints in this country.  The last thing we need is to redefine basic terms, further muddying the waters.

Incidentally, my brother was at my place over Thanksgiving when he noticed a dictionary on my bookshelves (a trusty ol’ 2004 Merriam-Webster paperback).  It’s a running joke with my family that I have waaay too many books, so he suggested I could toss my dictionary and simply look words up online.  This is a perfect example of why I won’t do that.  When the left has gone all 1984 on the English language, I can read my 2004 dictionary and remember a time before the world went crazy.

By the way, if you haven’t listened to the latest episode of Mock and Daisy’s podcast, you’re totally missing out on their hilarious (and absolutely reasonable) take on this topic.