ICYMI: Cambridge Dictionary redefines woman, man to include trans people

The Cambridge Dictionary has updated its definition of “woman” and “man” to include transgender people.

The dictionary publisher confirmed on Tuesday that it made the addition to the entry for “woman” in October.

“They carefully studied usage patterns of the word woman and concluded that this definition is one that learners of English should be aware of to support their understanding of how the language is used,” it told Washington Post.

“Transgender” is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression, or behaviour does not conform to that which is typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.

The longtime definition of the word “woman” in the Cambridge Dictionary was “an adult female human being”.

But a supplementary definition of the word in the dictionary currently reads: “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth”.

Included in the definition are two examples referencing transgender people.

One example reads: “She was the first trans woman elected to a national office.”

Another example using the updated definition reads: “Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth.”

Additional updates were also made to the entry for the word “man” to reference transgendered people.

One example listed for the supplemental definition of the word reads: “Mark is a trans man”.

Another reads: “Their doctor encouraged them to live as a man for a while before undergoing surgical transition.”

The updated definition came ahead of a milestone in the decades-long struggle for marriage equality in the United States.

News of it came as US President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on Tuesday in a development that grants federal protection to same-sex and interracial couples.

Cambridge’s update follows similar amendments from the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster.

In 2020, Oxford tweaked how it defined “woman” following a backlash from critics who described the definition and its accompanying synonyms as “sexist.”

Merriam-Webster, on the other hand, included a supplementary definition for “woman”, adding that being a woman means “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.”