An entry in Spain’s top dictionary has outraged one of the country’s oldest minorities by defining “gypsy” as synonymous with lying and cheating. The offending entry is in the Royal Spanish Academy’s annual update to its dictionary, the ultimate authority on the language in Spain and Latin America. One activist, Patricia Caro Maya, said the academy’s definition of gypsy “has always had false connotations of stealing and cheating as a cultural characteristic of ours.” The academy declined to comment on the issue to AFP, but cited the introduction to its dictionary, which says it takes care to avoid “gratuitously slanted or offensive” definitions.
