We're not saying that marriage, the thing, is now open to anyone of any gender. We are saying, when the word marriage is used in this particular context, this is what it means. And it was the same with "alternative facts." That was a big one. "Feminism" was a big one. And when people came to the "marriage" entry, because we live in the Internet age, they either immediately fire off an email to us saying they're horrified at how commie-pinko-liberal we are, or they fire off an e-mail saying thank you so much for speaking truth to power.

It's difficult to sit down and write a letter back saying, "you know what, even if we remove the word from the dictionary, people will still continue to use it." That's the tightrope that we walk - "gay marriage" is another example, or the word "nude."

Whenever you try and simplify how people speak, it's just hard to squish them into a simple rule. Language doesn't work that way.

Lexicographers may be nerds who don't like human contact, but we're still people.

I certainly self-police my language depending on who I'm talking to. I try to be very careful about using filler words, about not drawling certain vowels, even when I can't say "drawl" without drawling. That's kind of sad, because self-policing inhibits communication. You're more focused on the words coming out of your mouth or that should not be coming out of your mouth than making a connection with the person you're speaking to.

I don't know that I would say words are more political now, particularly after Donald Trump has come into office. I will say that what I notice is that people pay more attention to the words that politicians use. They really want to understand the full nuance, the connotative meanings of those words.

There's a measure of prescriptivism and descriptivism in every dictionary. Prescriptivism believes that the language should mirror the best practices of English, and editors are prescriptivist in so far as they don't want to let things they consider to be inelegant or ungrammatical into print.