Everyone in political life can expect to encounter criticism, perhaps especially on Twitter.
But when you wind up getting repeatedly publicly corrected by one of America’s most respected dictionaries, that’s a bit out of the ordinary.
Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, now knows how that feels.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Conway said she did not consider herself a feminist, as the term is usually used.
“It’s difficult for me to call myself a feminist in a classic sense because it seems to be very anti-male, and it certainly is very pro-abortion, and I’m neither anti-male or pro-abortion,” Conway said.
Merriam-Webster begged to differ, tweeting about its definition of the word just hours later.
Founded in 1931, Merriam-Webster is based on the work of Noah Webster — the man, incidentally, who removed the British “u” from words such as “color” and “neighbor.”
This is not the first time Merriam-Webster has sought to promulgate what it views as the correct definition of words that might have been misused by Conway.
After White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer disputed evidence showing that the crowd at Trump’s inauguration was smaller than the one at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Conway said Spicer had merely offered “alternative facts.”
Merriam-Webster subsequently offered its view on the term.
It has also been using Twitter, Trump’s favorite social media platform, to correct the president’s spelling.
