Letter to the Editor
Daily Press
Victorville, Ca
Some of us also love and depend on the dictionary but occasionally we miss the full meaning of a word. Mr. Gray, you have done so in your opinion of August 1, entitled “Semantics and marriage”. For fear of beating a dead horse, the fourth definition of marriage offered in my dictionary (Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language) reads, “Any close or intimate union”. Even the definition of “marry” has a broad context, number three states, “to join closely or intimately, unite”.
Every dictionary is a document of past verbal usage and therefore is never fully up to speed with the immediate culture. Thankfully, in today’s culture homosexuality is less a dirty word to be hidden from the children (in most cases), it is more a word that describes the few in every culture, past and present.
The common but sexist usage from the past is in my dictionary but to it’s credit there is an allowance for a definition that includes gay marriage. Your dictionary must have been written by a Neanderthal.
G.Goslaw
Victorville, Ca
