We campaigned for the dictionaries to change the outdated definition of the word bully. Because, before you can deal with bullying, you need to understand what it really means.

bully n. A person who uses strength or influence to harm or intimidate those who are weaker.

(Old Oxford Dictionary)

This definition states that bullies are strong, and the bullied are weak. This is clearly wrong, so we successfully campaigned and changed it to:

bully n. A person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable.

(New Oxford Dictionary)

At the start of Anti Bullying Week, The Diana Award spread the message from their social channels about the definition. Whilst they did that, YouGov helped generate a poll that backed up our point.

The campaign took off and millions of people got involved around the world. Even people from other countries were looking at their native language dictionaries and complaining about the same problem. By the end of the week, two dictionary companies had already agreed to review their definition of ‘bully’. Whilst others continued to ignore the ongoing uproar.

We managed to change the definition for good. Oxford, Collins, Cambridge, Google and Dictionary.com all finally agreed to change them.

bully n. A person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable.

(New Oxford Dictionary)

Now, no one who’s bullied will have to read they’re weak again. And future generations will understand better bullying behaviour from this day forwards. These are the only real results that matter. However, there were some impressive stats too.

• A total of over 86,000,000 media impressions

• Over 8,000 unique authors on Twitter

• ‘One of Snapchat’s most engaged UK filters’, with over 22,500,000 views

• Backed (unprompted) by global celebrities with millions of followers

• Most importantly, the top 5 dictionary companies changed their definitions