• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    people use the newer, less common meaning until it becomes more common

    And we can work to stop it from becoming more common by nipping it in the bud.

    then you’d just be on the losing side of the battle historically

    At least you turned up to the fight.

    But language is a shared medium

    Which is why change should be gradual and limited, otherwise two people who use that language are unable to clearly communicate.

    • Mechanismatic@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      But, you’re just one person. You won’t be present for 99.9999%+ of newer usages of terms, so you’ll be impotent to effect much change on the matter. With the level of illiteracy and the anti-intellectualism that seems rampant these days, even having a widely read column on a popular platform might be insufficient to turn such a tide. Maybe at best you’d be a screenwriter for a Hollywood blockbuster that a decent portion of the population watches and you could hope for the best, but even that seems weak considering we collectively don’t even remember movie lines accurately ten or twenty years later.