Not sure where to put this item I ran into on a blog, but my question belongs here: In 1975, the American Heritage Dictionary included this as a definition of fascism: "A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism." By 1993, it had been changed to this: "A system of government marked by a totalitarian dictator, socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition, and usually a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism." Now the AHD is not a "descriptivist" dictionary in general - it is one that advises on right and wrong, good and bad, use of words. So the excuse that political propaganda and careless normal use had damaged the '75 word, eroded its meaning into that shapeless and unrecognizable lump AHD is forced to recognize by '93, does not fly. The obvious possibility, then, is that someone at AHD deliberately altered that definition, and not for the better or more accurate. The question becomes: is that alteration ethical ? Has there been a wrong committed here ? My take is yes: the reader has been betrayed, and that betrayal is a wrong.
