Is the Dictionary Done For? The print edition of Merriam-Webster was once a touchstone of authority and stability. Then the internet brought about a revolution. Wars over words are inevitably culture wars, and debates over the dictionary have raged for as long as it has existed. Once, every middle-class home had a piano and a dictionary. The purpose of the piano was to be able to listen to music before phonographs were available and affordable. Later on, it was to torture young persons by insisting that they learn to do something few people do well. The purpose of the dictionary was to settle intra-family disputes over the spelling of words like "camaraderie" and "sesquipedalian," or over the correct pronunciation of "puttee." This was the state of the world not that long ago. In the late nineteen-eighties, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary was on the best-seller list for a hundred and fifty-five consecutive weeks. Fifty-seven million copies were sold, a number believed to be second only, in this country, to sales of the Bible. There was good money in the word business.

At first it looked unbelievable, but Henry Kissinger had died. At 100 years old, news outlets--and the world--had been preparing for the passing of President Nixon's secretary of state for a while. Still, when people were finding out via emoji-filled chain texts, it seemed unreal. Deepfakes, the metaverse, Elon Musk telling advertisers to fuck themselves at a time when X could probably use the money. Perhaps this is why there is a premium on genuineness these days.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. In an age of deepfakes and post-truth, as artificial intelligence rose and Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is "authentic." Lookups for the word are routinely heavy on the dictionary company's site but were boosted to new heights throughout the year, editor at large Peter Sokolowski told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. "We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity," he said ahead of Monday's announcement of this year's word.

Since Scrabble adopted an official lexicon in 1978, one thing has been constant: People have never stopped arguing about what is or isn't a word. Players have defended the game by noting that its letter strings--from AA (a kind of Hawaiian lava) to ZZZ (an interjection for sleep)--could be found in a bunch of standard North American dictionaries, books that have been used through the years to compile and revise Scrabble's tournament word list. But after an update last month introduced dozens of suspect words, riling up the community of competitive players, that's becoming harder to do. The linguistic tumult began in September, when the organization that maintains the word list used in club and tournament Scrabble, NASPA Games, published a draft of its update. The NASPA list includes all of the words in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, the go-to source for living-room and app players in North America, plus a lot more.

In the mid-1970s, top players in an emerging tournament Scrabble scene persuaded the game's corporate owner to adopt a universal lexicon for competition. Players manually scraped five standard college dictionaries, recording every unique two- through eight-letter word (plus inflections) that met the game's rules. When the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary was published, in 1978, players rejoiced. "You can retire the boxing gloves and put up your swords," the Scrabble Players Newspaper wrote. "You now have an arbiter to settle all arguments."

"Gaslighting" -- mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful -- is Merriam-Webster's word of the year. There wasn't a single event that drove significant spikes in the curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year. "It's a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us," said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday's unveiling. "It was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year," he said. There were deepfakes and the dark web.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The Justice Department charged a California man of hurling threats of violence against the Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc., while he allegedly accused the dictionary of promoting "lies and anti-science propaganda" regarding its gender definition entries for the words "woman" and "girl." Jeremy David Hanson, 34, of Rossmoor, California, was charged in federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts, by criminal complaint with one count of interstate communication of threats to commit violence. He was arrested and made an initial federal court appearance in the Central District of California on Wednesday.

Dr. John Lilly, a man of many interests, including the bases of human consciousness, found a great deal of inspiration in dolphins as well, devising many experiments to ascertain if dolphins could communicate with humans and vice versa. His work helped prop up the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. Aside from cetaceans, elephants and great apes have long been subjects of study into their apparently high levels of sentience. Great apes, belonging to the Hominidae family, to which we humans also belong, include gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. There is currently a movement, gathering momentum, to push for rights to be granted to non-human animals.

Until recently, allegations of "racism" in the public sphere have operated like first degree murder charges do in courts of law--in order to establish such a charge, mainstream media often demanded proof of the alleged racist's intent. Dictionary definitions have long tracked this blinkered view of'racism.' For decades, Merriam-Webster's entry described racism as a "belief" of racial supremacy, or a program designed to put that belief into action. Because many people--and some judges--treat dictionary definitions as if they were legal prescriptions, accusations of racism have required proof of intent--a purposeful, race-based disparity in conduct or consequence. Thus, the legal framework for considering racial discrimination has largely echoed the dictionary's narrow take on racism.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. An email from a Missouri woman has prompted Merriam-Webster to update its definition of "racism" to include the systemic aspects that have contributed to discrimination, according to a report. Kennedy Mitchum, 22, of Florissant, told KMOV-TV that she was inspired to email the dictionary publisher after getting into arguments with others about the definition of racism. Merriam-Webster defines racism as "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."