Dictionary.com has announced that “woman” is their Word of the Year for 2022.
“Woman” was chosen in part because the typical number of searches for it doubled over the last year, according to the website.
Over at Cambridge Dictionary they announced that they are changing the definition of woman. As Yahoo News reports the previous definition for “woman” was “an adult female human being”. It has been changed to “An adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth”.
In the novel "1984" the government changed the definitions of words to be more inclusive. It's called "newspeak". As study.com describes it: The goal of Newspeak is to limit the speaker's ability to critically think or form any ideas that go against the Party. It is made up of an extremely small amount of vocabulary and much simpler grammar rules that only allow for basic expression of thoughts. There are also many contractions used (like Ministry of Truth being shortened to Minitrue) to shorten the language even further. The simpler everyone's thoughts are, the easier it is for the Party to control them.
Side-note Webster.com announced their most searched word for 2022 is "Gaslighting".
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