While perusing the Roget’s New Millenium Thesaurus over at thesaurus.com, I noticed the following synonyms listed for the word bigoted:

biased, conservative, dogmatic, illiberal, narrow, narrow-minded, obstinate, opinionated, partial, partisan, sectarian, slanted, small-minded, twisted, unfair, warped

The antonyms of bigoted are listed as:

broad-minded, humanitarian, liberal, open-minded, tolerant, unprejudiced

According to this entry, we can see the political world according to Roget’s: Conservatives are warped people who are also biased, opinionated, unfair, small-minded and bigoted. Liberals are humanitarians who are open-minded, unprejudiced and tolerant.

Given the favorable associations with the word liberal and the negative view of the word conservative, one could easily conclude that this entry was written by a liberal. If that’s true, then it must also be the case that an open-minded, unprejudiced and tolerant person is describing people with different views as twisted and small-minded. That doesn’t sound very open-minded, unprejudiced or tolerant, does it?

It doesn’t to me, either.

So, I did a little research and discovered that Roget’s New Millenium Thesaurus is edited by a woman named Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. After a little more research, I was able to place a call to Ms. Kipfer, PhD.

Much to my surprise, Ms. Kipfer, PhD picked up the phone herself. I asked her if these characterizations indicated a political bias on the part of the people behind Roget’s. Ms. Kipfer, PhD replied that the word choices were not a sign of bias, just some sort of oversight. She further explained that a thesaurus is usually compiled from other thesauri—an act that, in another business, might be considered something else entirely—and that this would explain the “oversight”.

Ms. Kipfer, PhD suggested that the current entry might be corrected in a future version. I found Ms. Kipfer, PhD to be quite pleasant on the phone, and I have no reason to doubt her.

So, will my phone call really result in a change? I don’t know for sure, but if you find a future edition of Roget’s where conservatism is not portrayed in such an unflattering light, you’ll have this unfair, narrow-minded, opinionated bigot to thank.