Politics

Thesaurus.com Makes All Synonyms For ‘Obstructionist’ Related To Conservatives

Brendan Bordelon Contributor
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The online synonym generator Thesaurus.com — a subset of Dictionary.com and one of the most popular of its kind on the Internet — appears to have been commandeered by liberals, after a search for “obstructionist” leads only to replies like “conservative,” “right-winger,” “reactionary” and “redneck.”

Visit Thesaurus.com and type in “obstructionist” into the search bar. Here’s what you’ll see:

Thesaurus.com Obstructionist

 

Well look at that. Almost every concept demonstrated here illustrates an equivalence between “obstructionism” and conservative politics. And many of them — “diehard,” “reactionary,” redneck,” “stick-in-the-mud” — illustrate a contempt for the right-wing.

Here’s how Dictionary.com defines “obstructionist:”

Obstructionist Dictionary.com

What a nice, nonpartisan answer! And its origin is from the 1840s, long before many of these supposed synonyms even existed — though “Tory” and “silk-stocking” probably were around back then.

The antonyms provided by Thesaurus.com — “left-winger,” “progressive,” “liberal” — also point to a political bias.

The Thesaurus.com post references Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus. The Daily Caller could not confirm whether this accurate — after all, real journalists don’t ever need to search for synonyms — but we’re skeptical.

That’s because “obstructionism” is just a political strategy that may be employed by any ideological persuasion. While President Obama and the Democrats love hurling the “obstructionist” epithet at Republicans these days, in a few years they may find themselves on the receiving end as they block a GOP president’s attempt to roll back Obamacare or restrictive environmental regulations.

Ask.com, which owns both Thesaurus.com and Dictionary.com, did not immediately respond to questions concerning how the post was created or what the company will do to correct it.

[h/t IJReview]

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