idle musings

Being a word junky, I love Free Rice. My new goal to achieve is 50,000 grains donated.

I emailed them today because I had come across a word with a ‘correct’ definition that I did not agree with.

I am an avid player on freerice.com. I am up to almost 25,000 grains and I try to add another 1000 or so every day. I find that generally, the words and their definitions are well thought out, but one in particular that has popped up a few times is quite disturbing to me.

The definition of ‘adipose’, from the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, is as follows:

of or relating to animal fat; broadly : fat

The ‘correct’ answer on your site is ‘fatty’. This is disrespectful to people who carry more adipose tissue on their bodies, who are fat. I ask that you change this answer to simply be the word ‘fat’, rather than ‘fatty’ which carries negative connotations.

I would like a response to this email, informing me of the actions you choose to take. I would like to continue to play with freerice.com and continue to contribute to feeding the world’s hungry, but I will not be associated with a site that deliberately uses disrespectful language toward a group of people.

Their response to me, only 3 hours later:

Ah, we are glad you wrote and we absolutely agree with you. We intended ‘fatty’ to be an adjective as one might use it to describe beef, but the other usage is too common to ignore and so we changed the definition to ‘animal fat.’ That should remove all the bad connotations. Thanks for pointing it out and thanks for playing!

Needless to say, I am extremely satisfied with their response and will continue to link to their site as a creative and fun way to help world hunger.

Tags: body acceptance, links