"But the dictionary says..."

If you want to understand why I don't automatically accept the dictionary definition of words, here's a new example.

The definition of "anti-vaxxer" was changed in the Merrian-Webster dictionary to include "opposes...regulations mandating vaccination". Combined with how the definition of "vaccine" was itself recently changed (at least by government) so it could include the Covid shots, this should break anyone's loyalty to "dictionary definitions".

Check out what I said about "mandatory vaccines" back in 2015, and see whether my opinion has changed since that time.

I have never been an anti-vaxxer. Not by my own definition nor by the definition that used to appear in dictionaries. But by this new definition...?

As I point out in my own Liberty Dictionary, dictionaries don't tell you what words really mean, but how they are used. 

Any dictionary that is authoritarian/government-supremacist in its bias is going to define words to be more useful to what "authorities" want you to think. That's why the dictionary definition of "anarchy" is so bad. Why the dictionary definitions of "freedom" and "liberty" are so incomplete or misleading. "The dictionary" doesn't exist-- every dictionary is going to slant things according to the authors' biases.

I'm not suggesting we go all Humpty-Dumpty, but that we realize the authors of dictionaries are also prone to do just that. They aren't immune.

Check the dictionary definition, then weigh it against what you know to be true. You may find they don't agree.

-- H/T to JP

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