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by amanaplanacanal 1265 days ago
Correct according to whom?
1 comments

Humpty Dumpty is not an authority on the meaning of words.
That’s the thing. Nobody is. Words were not handed down from god. Language changes continuously. Notice how we aren’t speaking proto-indo-european any more?
I'm trying to avoid this conversation :-) I think descriptivism/prescriptivism is probably off-topic in this thread.

Oh well -

Someone upthread implied that the purpose of a descriptivist dictionary is to help readers/hearers to understand unfamiliar words, not to guide writers/speakers in correct usage. Thing is, they're all descriptivist. There are opinionated guides like Fowler (and the subject of this article! /on-topic), but I don't know of an opinionated lexicon.

Honestly it’s just my pet peeve. It’s like grammar nazis. I want to tell them this just isn’t how language works.