Sexism row prompts Oxford Dictionaries to review language used in definitions

Cited usages such as ‘rabid feminist’ to be reconsidered following Twitter storm

Oxford Dictionaries has said it will review the example sentences it uses for the adjective “rabid” after being accused of sexism over its current example: “a rabid feminist”.

The dictionary publisher, part of Oxford University Press, was taken to task by the Canadian anthropologist Michael Oman-Reagan, after he noticed that the word “rabid”, defined by the dictionary as “having or proceeding from an extreme or fanatical support of or belief in something”, used the example phrase “rabid feminist”. Oman-Reagan tweeted about it to the publisher, suggesting they change it.

If only there were a word to describe how strongly you felt about feminism… https://t.co/mAsmjUBoOs

1/4 We were flippant in some of our tweets yesterday. Sorry.

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