Amia Srinivasan on language and pronouns: “Language is a public system of meaning. No individual can unilaterally decide what a word means, or whether any given word, according to standard usage, truly describes them. And yet the definitions of words – as any lexicographer will tell you – depend on patterns of actual human usage, which can and do shift over time.”
Cheri has been an editor at Longreads since 2014. She's currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Cheri Lucas Rowlands
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