Anticipating that we might talk about President Obama’s interview on same-sex marriage, how it’s covered in the New York Times, and reading how people invoke what marriage “means,” I did what you do when you encounter a word whose meaning seems less than stable: I looked it up in the OED.
First: wow, that is a lot of Middle English forms. But then also notice the additionial note in a smaller font under sense #1: “The term is now sometimes used with reference to long-term relationships between partners of the same sex.”
Finally, if you are interested in the visual display of quantitative information — and who isn’t? — click here.