Different studies have analysed the sexist bias of the academic dictionary, among them the comprehensive study of Lledo Cunill, Calero Fernández and Forgas Berdet (2004) was highlighted, who analysed the ideological features of the twenty-second edition of the academic dictionary (published in 2001), showing the sexist and androcentric uses present in the work3. Subsequently, Cabeza Pereiro and Rodríguez Barcia (2013:24) observed the lack of visibility, the absence of morphological pairs and the maintenance of obsolete definitions in the dictionary, which led to a process of minimizing women.

From different groups (associations, trade unions, Women’s Institute, Parliament ...) certain words or definitions which appear in the academic dictionary as pejorative for women were also denounced. These kinds of demands began in the 1980s, when the issue of feminisation of language took centre stage in Spanish society, the result of academic work, but, above all, feminist revendications that began with the Transition and were publicised through the press (Guerrero Salazar, 2019b).

The starting hypothesis for this work is that the debate and demands for change regarding sexism in the academic dictionary, which are currently generated on social networks, from where they become press news- have influenced in the latest variations produced in certain definitions. To corroborate this hypothesis, the following objectives were set: Firstly, to determine when in Spain feminist demands on the dictionary began, that is, those involving a change in words or definitions that were felt to be discriminatory towards women; Secondly, to analyse the main demands made in recent years (who carried them out, what arguments and counterarguments were used, what beliefs and attitudes were revealed); thirdly, to assess what effects the debate generated has had (especially through social networks) on the latest changes carried out in some definitions in the academic dictionary.

2. Methodology

An exploratory analytical work is presented that focuses on a corpus taken from the Virtual Library of the Languages of Spain (HEVILE)4, a digital tool that gathers news from various communication media, regional, national and international, related to linguistic issues. The texts are tagged, and parameterized searches can be made. Via the tag “academic dictionary” 80 texts were selected which focused on words and definitions that have been the subject of media debate in recent years for their sexist nature and have produced demands, collective or individual, demanding their change or elimination.

The analysis of the texts has allowed us, first of all, to determine which words have been the most relevant: in 2013 the adjective feminine (‘weak or feeble’), in 2016 the noun jueza (´female judge´) (‘judge’s wife’), in 2017 the syntagma the weaker sex (‘women in general’) and public woman (‘prostitute’) and in 2018 the words easy (‘referring especially to a woman: who is freely available to have sexual relations’) and mop (‘a maid serving and cleaning in the kitchen’; ‘uncouth and uncultured woman’).