Reminder: They changed the dictionary definition of vaccine in the middle of the night
In the Internet Age, I have a dictionary that is half a foot thick and weighs 8.6 pounds.
Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language.
It came from a church rummage sale from the “five for a dollar” book section.
It was $0.20.
A husband and wife pair I know gifted it to me. To me, it’s worth more like $20,000.
The reasons I have it are several. However, the reason that put me over the edge, and finally moved me to go analogue with my dictionary needs, was what took place on or about January 18, 2021.
That night, quietly, they changed the dictionary.
No press release. No notice. No fanfare.
The owners of Miriam-Webster, the online successor to the American dictionary of record — Webster’s Dictionary, the closest thing to a standard for the decentralized, bottom-up dialect we call American English — the owners of that dictionary pulled a slimy move.
The people with the mantle of that kind of cultural treasure so glibly cast away the anointing of that mantle by doing something so very evil with it.
You only get one chance to pull a slick move like that.
They traded it for a momentary, politically expedient victory, and forever marred the reputation of Webster’s. I use the web version of the dictionary for basic, non-essential research, but after January 18, 2021, I will not trust the company again with anything that matters.
Miriam-Webster is owned by the Britannica Group of companies, then, overseen by CEO and World Economic Forum stooge Karthik Krishnan, who tries so desperately to be relevant in the world and is forever looking to cozy up to the globalist muckety-muck. That is not who you want left in charge of cultural treasures.
On the morning of January 18, 2021, the dictionary said a vaccine was:
“a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease”
That was quietly changed to:
“a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious disease:
“a
: an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see ATTENUATED sense2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)
“b
: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)”
The change is notable in that the newer definition now includes the mRNA therapy for Covid-19, which does not fit the previously established definition of vaccine. As such, the usage of the term “Covid vaccine” or “coronavirus vaccine” in the popular media had not been accurate. However, based on this new definition, that usage is now accurate.
Is a definition something you change every time it serves you? Or do words actually have meaning?
Surely languages are a changing thing. But dictionaries are the institutions that tell you the history of a word, reliably providing some permanence to the language, holding people to account, even holding powerful figures such as reporters and politicians to account, even holding dictionary editors to account.
Occasionally, a dictionary shifts definitions, changing its definition based on bottom-up cultural pressure. This often happens when the public has come to use a word differently, often for decades, and dictionary editors finally adjust to the cultural pressures.
In January 2021, in that same dictionary, cul-de-sacs became listed as the preferred plural for cul-de-sac. Fox-trot was turned into the preferable foxtrot. Tear gas was turned into the preferable tear-gas.
Such shifts take place with some fanfare and with great media hype, to show how relevant the dictionary is. They get written up in corny news articles and get mentioned by Al Roker on morning shows alongside cheesy jokes.
Curiously, the trivial changes listed above were done with fanfare and press releases, while the substantial change in definition of what may be the most important word of 2021 — vaccine — was done surreptitiously.
That’s simply not honest.
For years, dictionaries have had to flex to the pressure of changing words in society and the need for commenting on usage from the bottom-up. This is the difference between it being a document of description (this is how the language is used) and a document of prescription (this is how the language should be used).
Standards are important. Is a standard something you change quietly, at night? Is a standard something you change suddenly? Is a standard for a dictionary changed when there is no history of accepted usage? Is a standard something you change when top-down pressure says it is time to prescribe a new meaning for a word?
At Miriam-Webster you do. At Britannica you do.
And that’s why I use a half foot thick, 8.6 pound print dictionary from 1996.
It won’t change in the middle of the night.
In spring 2020, I realized we were all being lied to. I had a hunch that search engines were being used to censor the truth, to cover up the lies. But I wasn’t willing to believe this until I had proof. So my team and I took a few days to research what search engines were doing, determining how the algorithms had been updated to begin acting like censors.
We discovered — almost across the board — this was happening. If you would like to have a closer look at our research, we put together a report on the 11 search engines that suck and the 2 that don’t.
Duck Duck Go, by the way, is one of the ones that suck.
Because I know you are busy, I list the good ones and bad ones by name for you right on the first page of the report, so you do not need to go digging around for it. The rest of the research is also chock-full of neat information and shocking stories for anyone who wants to nerd out on this stuff.
Click here to request a copy, put your email address in the box, and that research report will be immediately emailed right over to you.
All this — the dictionary, the search engine research, my daily letters, my workaround face masks and other health mandates, and much more — is to impress upon you how it is you who is in control of so much in your life, no matter what the Big Tech oligarchs say, no matter what the World Economic Forum says, no matter what some local bureaucrat says.
It may be occasionally inconvenient, like an 8.6 pound dictionary, but the freedom is within your grasp.
If we persevere, in time we will have a community of people with simple solutions that are also empowering, pro-freedom solutions. One step at a time, we will get there. You know what is lacking in your life. Chances are the solution is within easy reach. It is up to you to just focus on taking that next step toward living a more free life.
Allan Stevo