The online dictionary Macmillandictionary.com has become the first UK dictionary to revise its definition of marriage to reflect the change in the law allowing same sex couples to marry.
The definition of “marriage” now reads: “The relationship between two people who are husband and wife, or a similar relationship between people of the same sex,” with the second clause newly added.
The revision follows the marriage (same sex couples) bill through its crucial reading in the House of Lords on 15 July and accompanies other changes in a significant update to the dictionary. One that is likely to offend grammar purists is the inclusion of “of” as a preposition for use with “bored”, as in “bored of”.
Macmillandictionary.com editor-in-chief Michael Rundell said the change to the definition of “marriage” might suggest a future redefining of the terms “husband” and “wife”. “In a same sex relationship two men are probably not going to refer to themselves as ‘wife’, but if it’s two women, they might, so we need to keep an eye on that.”
The Macmillandictionary.com definition of wife is “the woman that a man is married to”, and husband is “the man that a woman is married to”.
Changes to the official definitions of words are guided by analysis of their usage. “We have a corpus of two billion words, a huge collection of text including books, magazines and recorded speech, which we analyse in great detail to understand frequent and common usage,” Rundell said.
The construction “bored of” was now used by “most younger people”, he said, adding, “statistically, it’s about equally as common as ‘bored with’. It will upset some traditionalists, but it’s not our job to say we don’t like it, or we don’t approve”.
However the Oxford English Dictionary (OED.com), whose dictionary definitions already include references to same sex marriage, said it “would continue to monitor the way in which the word marriage is used”, adding that “dictionaries reflect changes in the use of language, rather than changes in law”.
The OED definition of “marriage” is “the condition of being a husband or wife; the relation between persons married to each other; matrimony”, with a supplementary line which says “the term is now sometimes used with reference to long-term relationships between partners of the same sex”.
Its definitions of husband and wife are set to be revised as part of an ongoing programme, but for now remain less than up-to-date.
The definition of “husband” reads: 1. “The master of a house, the male head of a household.” And 2. “A man joined to a woman by marriage. Correlative to wife.”
While “wife” reads: 1. “A woman: formerly in general sense; in later use restricted to a woman of humble rank or ‘of low employment’ (Johnson), esp. one engaged in the sale of some commodity.” And 2. “A woman joined to a man by marriage; a married woman. Correlative to husband.”
Macmillandictionary.com is an online publication that introduces updates “several times a year”, the most recent being a significant revision including technology-driven changes to existing definitions and the addition of new words.
The word “meeting” is defined as “an occasion when people gather to discuss things and make decisions, either in person or using phones, the internet etc”, and “camera” is “a piece of equipment used for taking photographs, either as part of a mobile device or as a separate item”.
Photo: Lee Harper
Author: Liz Bury
Publication: theguardian books
22 August 2013