From ‘skibidi’ to ‘tradwife’, dictionary entries are never neutral
The internet had a good laugh when words like “skibidi” and “delulu” were added to the Cambridge dictionary.
Dr Daniel Chan, Assistant Dean (Office of Programmes) at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Senior Lecturer of French at the NUS Centre for Language Studies, points out that dictionaries not only provide definitions for words, but they also decide which words are officially accepted into the English language. For years, new words have been drawn from UK or US sources, creating a bias that makes Anglo-American words more likely to be recorded and preserved while words spoken elsewhere get forgotten.
Dr Chan astutely noted that beyond what gets included, the way dictionaries define new words can also reshape cultural memory. For instance, when the definitions of controversial terms get neutralised, with their political connotations stripped away, their neutral meanings are cemented in dictionaries while the omitted nuances are gradually lost with time.
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