by Kate Anderson
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) added 18 new LGBTQ+ entries in 2022, including words like gender-affirming, multisexual, top and bottom.
The OED added nearly 2,000 words in the past year, according to announcements from March, June and September, with 18 of those words updated or added to specifically define ever-evolving LGBTQ+ terms. In March, OED added anti-gay and anti-homosexual, with the former receiving a specific definition while anti-homosexual was listed only as a subcategory.
“Opposed or hostile to homosexual people (sometimes specifically gay men) or homosexuality,” OED’s anti-gay definition states.
OED also added several words specific to other countries for the LGBTQ+ community, according to LGBTQ Nation. Bakla, the Philippine term for a biological male who identifies as a female, was added in June along with Muxe, pronounced moo-shay, which is from Mexican culture for a biological man who identifies as female, and Australian terms brotherboy and sistergirl.
“A brotherboy is a person registered as female at birth who identifies with or presents a masculine gender expression, typically through behaviours, occupations, modes of dress, etc., that are culturally associated with masculinity’ and a sistergirl was assigned male at birth and presents in ways associated with femininity,” the definition states.
Teahouse was included as a U.S. slang term to refer to a public toilet in which gay men “solicit” or “engage” in sexual behavior with one another. Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist or TERF, created in 2008, was given an additional note stating that the term is considered derogatory to the LGBTQ community.
The dictionary added pangender to define a person who identifies as multiple genders and changes between them in a fluid manner. The term is not to be confused with the 2018 definition of pansexual, which is the emotional and physical attraction to individuals regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Top and bottom have been in the OED for years, but were recently updated to include new sub-definitions.
“The 12a intransitive verb sense of bottom in the OED is now ‘to take the role of the more submissive partner in bondage, domination, or sadomasochism’ and 12b is ‘originally and chiefly among gay men: to be the partner who is penetrated in (esp. anal) sex,’” LGBTQ Nation explains. “For top, multiple new definitions were also added, including ‘to take a dominant role over (one’s partner) in bondage, domination, or sadomasochism’ and ‘to be the partner who penetrates the other in sex between men (often with the implication of being the more dominant or active partner).’”
The word gender was given several new sub-definitions including gender-affirming and gender critical, while gender expression and gender presentation were also added under the same definition. Multisexual describes a person that is attracted to multiple individuals with different “gender identities” or sexes, according to LGBTQ Nation.
The Oxford Dictionary did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Kate Anderson is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Oxford Dictionaries” by Philafrenzy. CC BY-SA 4.0.
