The Cambridge Dictionary has updated its definition of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ to accommodate transgenders, people who identify as a gender other than their biological sex.
The updated definitions are in addition to the long-standing definitions of “an adult male human being” for ‘man’ and “an adult female human being” for ‘woman’.
The supplementary definition of ‘man’ in the online dictionary reads: “an adult who lives and identifies as male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
The following examples are provided: “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.”
The definition of ‘woman’ now also includes “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
Explaining the updated meaning, the dictionary gives two examples: “She was the first trans woman elected to a national office” and “Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth.”
A spokesperson for the Cambridge Dictionary told the Telegraph that the editors revised the definitions in October after studying patterns of how the words were being used across society and concluded that the new definitions are one that English learners “should be aware of to support their understanding of how the language is used.”
Though the online dictionary has come under heavy criticism for the update, Cambridge Dictionary is not the first dictionary to revise its definitions. In July, the Merriam-Webster dictionary added a supplementary definition of ‘female’ that defines the term as “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.”
