They believe that if we make a change to the dictionary, then we have made a change to the language, and if we make a change to the language, then we also make a change to the culture around that language. We see this most poignantly in requests to remove slurs of various kinds from our dictionaries. If you remove “retarded” from the dictionary, people tell us, then no one will smear someone as “retarded” ever again, because that word is no longer a word. I am the unfortunate drudge who must inform them that we cannot miraculously wipe out centuries of a word’s use merely by removing it from
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