Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

In January, gay language watchers like Miss Poubelle were treated to a stimulating controversy involving Merriam-Webster's online thesaurus (www.m-w.com). A user noticed that when the word homosexual was entered into the thesaurus, it suggested synonyms like faggot, dyke, pederast, and sodomite. This provoked outrage among some gay audiences, and after consideration, Merriam-Webster decided to withdraw these synonyms. As a result, when you enter homosexual now, you get no synonyms at all.

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Miss Poubelle had mixed feelings about the controversy. Some gay rights activists, like John McMullen, president of GLOradio Corporation, were appalled at the inclusion of these terms and were quick to condemn Merriam-Webster. "The homophobic references by Merriam-Webster are nothing more than a tool to perpetuate hate speech towards sexual minorities," said McMullen.

The Guide's own French Wall, however, was more concerned about the free speech aspect of the controversy. In a letter to Merriam-Webster, he argued for retaining the references, writing "Campaigns by the elite to redact language (or history) are to be resisted. It may say something disturbing about our culture that we have so many slurs for us 'inverts'... but sanitizing dictionaries and thesauruses is not an appropriate response."

Miss Poubelle is in complete agreement with that second position when it comes to dictionaries. The purpose of a dictionary is to record every word of the language, along with a definition and (if appropriate) some sort of usage label that tells us if a word is derogatory. Faggot and dyke should definitely be in the dictionary. After all, if readers encounter such words and don't know their meaning, how else are they to learn them?

On the other hand, thesauruses (or for Latinist readers, thesauri) are very peculiar creatures. Their function is to serve as aid to a writer who is trying to choose exactly the right word. The basic problem with a thesaurus is that few words in English are exact synonyms-- there is almost always some slight difference in connotation or usage. To take a random example, if we look up the word get we are given synonyms like acquire, annex, chalk up, gain, have, pick up, procure, secure, and win. Now none of these words is perfectly synonymous with get. Suppose we take a sentence like I got this white fur chubby at Filene's. Substituting almost any of these words for got will yield an extremely odd sentence. I won this white fur chubby at Filene's is plainly different in meaning. I acquired it and I picked it up are similar in meaning, but have different connotations. Acquire is usually said of rather substantial, expensive items, while pick up implies the opposite. I annexed/chalked up/had this white fur chubby at Filene's are all just bizarre.

The general problem with a thesaurus is that it implicitly relies on an enormous amount of information that speakers of English already have in their heads. If thesauruses have any useful function, it's probably to remind us of words that we already know. And on the flip side, if you look up something in a thesaurus and there is a word that you don't already know, it is probably very unwise to use it. Dictionaries aspire to scientific completeness; thesauruses are quirky collections of words that might jog your memory.

That being said, we might ask ourselves whether a user of the Merriam-Webster thesaurus is likely to find it useful for faggot, dyke, pederast, and sodomite to be listed as synonyms for homosexual. Try as she might, Miss Poubelle is unable to imagine many contexts in which a writer could safely substitute one for the other. Homosexual is an almost clinical term; the other "synonyms" are either derogatory or likely to have unintended associations. (Though, of course, they may have widely-nuanced uses inside our own community.) An unwary writer who accepts one of these synonyms is likely to find himself or herself in hot water. In the same way that it is not helpful to the average writer to suggest coon as a synonym for African-American, it is not helpful to suggest that faggot can safely be substituted for homosexual.

So Miss Poubelle must conclude that Merriam-Webster probably made the right decision. Anybody can use a dictionary, but a synonym in ignorant hands is a potential weapon. **