Gender in Dictionary Definitions: A Comparison of Five Learner’s Dictionaries and Their Different Editions

Issues of gender present an increasing challenge to lexicographers. The example sentences cited in some dictionaries have been criticised for enhancing stereotyped images of men and women. Definitions should similarly be free from any gender bias, a requirement that may at times clash with the actual use of the word in corpora. The present study focusses on the definitions of twenty-five words in the twentieth and twenty-first-century editions of five learner's dictionaries. The results show that there is a great deal of variation between the works examined when it comes to associating individual words with men or women. Furthermore, the different editions of a dictionary often manifest vacillation in gender descriptions.