Hi, I’m Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD., editor and compiler of Roget’s New Millenium Thesaurus. The synonym “weaker sex” appears in many thesauruses for terms like woman, lady, and female. It is considered an informal, possibly derogatory, synonym for those words. Due to the way our search technology works, a search for weaker appeared to suggest that it was a synonym for female and lady. This was incorrect and has been fixed.

We take your concerns about language and society seriously (this is, after all, our business) and after reading feedback on the entries for female and lady, we carefully reviewed our editorial decisions. In light of how our customers use Thesaurus.com on a daily basis, we chose to remove “weaker sex” as a informal/slang synonym from our site. The entries now describe current American English usage more accurately and we feel we’re providing more helpful suggestions for those seeking guidance on word choice from us.

We apologize for any confusion this situation may have caused and hope you’ll stay in touch with us as we strive to improve all the learning resources we provide on Thesaurus.com, Dictionary.com and Reference.com.

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