Hyderabad: The Cambridge dictionary has updated its definition of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ to include people who identify as a gender other than their biological sex.
The updated definition of a ‘Woman’ reads “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth”, and ‘man’ reads “an adult who lives and identifies as a male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth”.
The dictionary had also two explained the definitions with examples. For ‘Woman’ the examples read — “She was the first trans woman elected to a national office” and “Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth”.
“Mark is a trans man (= a man who was said to be female when they were born). and “their doctor encouraged them to live as a man for a while before undergoing surgical transition”, read the examples for ‘man’.
The revised definitions were reportedly included in the month of October. However, these updated meanings are now being severely criticised on social media, with people asking Cambridge dictionary to include the terms ‘trans men’ and ‘trans women’ instead.
“The Cambridge Dictionary just changed the definition of “woman”. Remember, if you can control the language, you can control the population,” wrote a user. “And the new definition of squirrel: A person who lives and identifies as a squirrel though they may have been said to be something else at the time of birth (sic),” read another comment.
I'm not a trans man, no matter what @CambridgeWords might say! Guess you stopped being a dictionary, Cambridge. Perhaps we could redefine you as Cambridge Fiction?
Maybe it’s time to redefine the word “dictionary”.
Maybe something like
Cambridge Dictionary: a book of words and terms whose meanings are fluid and subject to change by anyone due to politics, emotional needs or social engineering. * see Wikipedia