Gendered Epithets in Two Prominent Romanian Dictionaries

Abstract

The present paper seeks to investigate the representation of a relevant number of gendered epithets in two prominent Romanian dictionaries, the most recent edition of DOOM (2021, Third Edition) and the current edition of DEX (2016, Revised Edition based on the first and second editions). Taking into account the prescriptive dimension which both these dictionaries share and the fact that they both retain their status as significant reference books in present-day Romania, the paper examines the way in which these current dictionaries choose to describe these words, arguing for the significance of the “metadata” (Nunberg, 2018; Pullum, 2018) component in the lexicographical representation of lexical items which can function as gendered insults.