Personal Dictionary is currently a Definition-Only Page due to a decision by site founder Fast Eddie, who declared that examples "just devolve into complaints". There were both real-life and in-universe examples, and only the former one had complaining. The decision seemed to be only for on-page examples, so there's no wick check.

Here are the examples that were removed:

[[folder: Fictional Examples]] Literature

• Deconstructed in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, where a few chapters, labeled "A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words," center around the different connotations and meanings certain words have to certain characters, and how these slightly different meanings lead to relationship problems.

Live-Action TV

• In a rare example of using this other than as a logical fallacy, there's an episode of Friends in which Monica gets angry at Chandler for describing their relationship as "just goofing around" and he placates the argument by saying what that means in his dictionary.
• In the Babylon 5 episode "Voices of Authority", Political Officer Julie Musante claims that Earth has no problems with homelessness, unemployment, crime, or prejudice:
  Sheridan: And when, exactly, did all this happen?
  Musante: When we rewrote the dictionary.

Web Comics

• 8-Bit Theater: Temple's a kind of castle. Everyone in the world knows that. It's in the Sardapedia.
  Sardapedia: castle (tem-puhl) - noun: Where the goddamn Light Warriors are going.
  Thief: That's all this book says. Over and over, for hundreds of pages.
  Sarda: Yes. I know.
• El Goonish Shive: Grace has her own dictionary.

Western Animation

• Futurama: 'Odelay' is a word! Just look it up in the Becktionary! ... No, the rhyming Becktionary!

People

• Terry Goodkind (author of Sword of Truth) thinks the definition of "fantasy" is a lack of philosophical discussions and ideas, when all the rest of us thought that such a lack defined "light fiction", while "fantasy" defined a setting. Now while definitions combine the two, fantasy has not been automatically light fiction since The Lord Of The Rings.
• Paul Erdös, though it was simply his idiosyncratic word choice rather than an attempt to obfusicate matters. For a sampling:
  • Children are "epsilons," women "bosses," men "slaves."
  • People who leave mathematics "die," while those who die "leave."
  • Giving mathematics lectures is "preaching," while oral exams are "torture."
  • The USA was "samland," the USSR "joedom," and Israel "israel."
• In Future on Ice, Orson Scott Card said that although Isaac Asimov didn't believe in God, he wrote some very religious stories. From the context, Card was apparently using "religious" to mean "philosophical," which has some interesting implications if he's not the only one to use the word that way.
  • Alternately, he might have been using "religious" to mean "about religion" rather than "expressing belief in religion". That's not exactly the same as the usual meaning of the word "religious", but it's probably too close for this trope. "I, Robot" alone includes a story where hyperspace actually causes a near-death experience (with one astronaut seeing a brief vision of the afterlife), and another where robots worshiped the hardware they maintain like a god.
• Freud's works are notoriously difficult to translate: given his fondness for neologisms, and for using other words to mean just what he chose them to mean.
• Stephenie Meyer and "chagrin".
  • Also, "vegetarian".
• Before 2006, the word "planet" referred to any nonluminous, spherical celestial body that is orbiting a star. After 2006, the IAU came up with a new definition for "planet": a large celestial body that is completely spherical, is orbiting a star, and has cleared its vicinity of any foreign debris. As a result one planet had to be removed from the official roster...
• While they still referred "princess" as a female authority figure that is either the daughter of a king or queen or the wife of a prince, starting in 1985 Disney actually came up with their own definiton of that same word: a female authority figure that is either the daughter of a king or queen or the wife of a prince, has animals for companions, is the star of a musical, and must be a financial success.
  • Fortunately, Disney does not have its own definition of "villain."

Politics

• Politicians. And journalists. And pundits. Basically, everyone involved in political commentary in any way. And they wonder why so many people are apathetic. Do not go into anything specific someone said.
• The political denotations "right" and "left" tend to mean "against my views" or "for my views", interchangeably, depending on who is using them.
  • Similarly, if you ask people in Europe what "right" and "left" mean, you'll get a vastly different answer than someone from the United States.
• The way a lot of people—on either side—talk about "tolerance", you'd think the root word was "accept" or "agree," not "tolerate."
• The 1967-74 Greek military junta had one so extensive and consistent, it got its own Wikipedia article.

Religion

• Is Christianity a religion or not? It depends on who you ask. Many Christians insist that it's not a religion, and that they are not "religious", but instead are "spiritual" or "faithful". This has actually resulted in online arguments between Christians and other faiths, with Christians saying things like "You follow a religion. I follow the word of God" or "As a Christian, I follow no religion."
  • When it comes to freedom of religion, though, suddenly all Christians can agree, it's a religion.
  • Even worse: discussing whether atheism is a religion.
    • Protip: It's a lack of religion. Or a negation of it.
      • That's ''irreligion'' that's a lack or negation of religion, technically speaking.
      • In 1961, Torcaso v. Watkins, the US Supreme Court defined secular humanism as a religion, and did likewise in 2005 for atheism, Kaufman v. McCaughtry.

• Right now, a group of people in Oklahoma are arguing that Islam is a political philosophy, not a religion, and therefore a mosque that's about to be built should not get the tax-exempt status afforded to religion.
• Creationists have a surprisingly large Personal Dictionary that contains definitions you'd never find in a peer-reviewed scientific publication. And their use of more common words is just as abysmal. As Isaac Asimov put it: "Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."

Internet

• Have you ever been on a message board, and corrected someone on a definition, and they use this trope and end with "I would call that X,"? Well they "would call" the sky green, but it's not going to magically change it.
• Never, for any reason, in any situation, start a discussion of the definition of "atheist" versus "agnostic". Unless you want to reduce the Internet to radioactive vapor.
• This post from engadget about Toshiba making a blu-ray player: "Japan's own Yomiuri is reporting today that Toshiba is expected to finally admit defeat". How the hell does discontinuing the rival product the previous year not count as admitting defeat?
• What's a Casual or Hardcore game, what even qualifies as a game to begin with? Who's a "Gamer", who isn't? Heck, even at lower levels, what's a "real" RPG?
• Don't bring up the topic of what is or isn't an Otaku online.
• What is meant by "Geek" and "Nerd", and their differences (or lack thereof) differs widely for whoever uses the words.
• Extends into the real world as well, but "irony" at this point has the same meaning as pretty much every adjective.
• When a fan-film or parody is put up online and becomes popular, someone will inevitably declare that it's more "original" than X amount of Hollywood's output. Despite the fact that a parody or fan-film is derivative by definition.
  • There's also the gamer definition of "original", which involves decrying game series like Call Of Duty as cookie-cutter, lauding series like Battlefield as innovative, and saying whatever hit indie game has a deliberately retro aesthetic or mechanics this week as refreshing, often insisting that more mainstream games should be as original as it, which is a double contradiction in terms.

Advertisement and Sales

• Car manufacturers indulge in this a lot; "Hatchback" sounds cheap and basic to "Generation Jones"? "Wagon" reminds 35-50-year old women of vinyl-upholstered, wood-paneled Country Squires? "Minivan" makes young women fear they've turned into the very "suburban yuppie soccer moms" they've loathed all their life? Then let's try "crossover", or maybe just "five-door".

Tropes

• The phrase "Mary Sue" tends to have a shifting Personal Definition that covers just about any character that somebody feels like complaining about. Uses as per its original meaning are rare.
  • Check out the page for a full discussion.
• Wangst is also a highly subjective label. While some can listen to Linkin Park without feeling the slightest annoyance, others see a Stoic Woobie like Sousuke and immediately pounce on them for whining about their situation (whether there was actual whining or not).
• Egregious. Which probably doesn't look like a word anymore to most Tropers - we have an article on it for a reason.