Do Vegans Care More About Animals Than People?

[Binkie The Clown]

21. Consult a textbook on linguistics.

Words mean what they are generally agreed upon to mean. You prefer a narrow, less generally accepted definition. Fine. Your choice. But your religion isn't the one and only true religion, and your definition isn't the one and only sanctified true definition. Many dictionaries, online and print, have already established that the generally accepted definition is far less narrow than your preferred definition. That's fine. You are entitled to your own idiolect, just as I am entitled to prefer the generally accepted meaning. Your mistake is in trying to force me to conform to your idiolect. That's all I'm saying. Either you accept the generally accepted meaning of a word, or you define that word differently in your idiolect for ideological reasons. That makes you akin to a fundamentalist, adhering to the narrowest of interpretations as handed down by some "authority" and rejecting the generally agreed upon meaning.

I'm glad we did finally settle that.

So we both conform to some norm. It's just that your norm and mine are different subsets of the English speaking world. You define it the way your in-group defines it and I will define it the way the rest of the world defines it. And that truly does settle it. And, to be honest, I have nothing more to say on the subject. Either you believe in dictionaries or you don't. If you don't, I can't convince you they are real.