Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin the Carrot
" it has become common usage with a section of English-speakers..."
what on Gods earth are you talking about?/
its not and never has been apart from 0.00001% of the UK population
and they are all under 25
GET A GRIP TS
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It doesn't matter, the purpose of a dictionary is to define how a word is or might be used. 0.00001% is obviously a massive exaggeration, I would imagine the figure is closer to 10 - 20% and it's also used heavily in media with that definition which inflates that relevance. The age of people using it doesn't matter at all either; it wouldn't matter if they were all under 10, just as it doesn't matter if a word is used exclusively by over-70's. Plenty of words in the dictionary falling out of usage and only used by the elderly, or that have different definitions across generations. We don't take them out of the dictionary because they're only used that way by a small number of people. If you read it in a sentence... that might be the intended definition,
and so that definition needs to be in the dictionary to make it a fully functional linguistic tool.
It's honestly that simple.
I don't agree with the definition at all, as it happens. I didn't say that above because it doesn't matter.
If I went through the dictionary right now with a highlighter and marked off every word that has a supplementary definition that I don't agree with, that troubles me, or that I perhaps
have never even heard it would be a pretty long list. It would be a long list if anyone did it, and all with different words. Such is language.
Not liking a definition doesn't mean people don't use the word that way... if people use the word that way,
it becomes a definition.
Language is like the wind or the tides... it just *is*, it just *happens*, no one really controls it, nor ever has, nor should they try.