The Semantics of Marriage Equality

An editor for The American Heritage Dictionary reflects on the redefinition of marriage — shortly before the death of his own husband.

So often in the struggle for civil rights, gays and lesbians face criticisms from social conservatives regarding tradition. When asserting that marriage has always been solely a union between one man and one woman, our adversaries trot out old dictionary definitions to support their claims. But just because some dictionaries in the past defined marriage in this way does not mean that the word is used in the same way today. The job of dictionaries is primarily to describe how language is used, not to dictate how it should be used.

I'm the supervising editor for The American Heritage Dictionary and a lexicographer. In January the other dictionary editors and I revised several definitions relating to the word marriage to reflect the changes in legal status that have occurred over the past few years. For example, the definition of widower formerly read "A man whose wife has died and who has not remarried." I revised this definition to "A man whose spouse has died and who has not remarried."

Just two months later my own husband died unexpectedly and accidentally. We had been together almost 15 years. Because we were residents of Massachusetts, we had been able to marry in the fall of 2004. Suddenly I found myself to be a widower, and when our 2009 printing came off the presses in the spring, it included the updated definition of widower — a word that now applied to me. In the shattered aftermath of profound loss, an obsolete or incomplete definition of widower would seem an insignificant detail, but all such trivial details viewed together coalesce into a constant reminder of a two-tiered, unequal system. Therefore, having had the ability to revise the definitions that appear in a major American dictionary took on an important resonance for me.