This has been the course of language throughout history. 'Gay' once meant happy or festive. 'Factoid' once meant a falsehood repeated so much that it became accepted as truth. 'Nazi', 'racist', fascist', and 'white-supremacist' also, at one time, had actual meanings.
sure and exterminate in germany meant to put beyond or outside your borders, which corresponds precisely to what is stated in wannasse 'The J-Wish solution' and precisely what hitler did, 'Havaara',,,,,,,,,, but never fear the boneheaded illiterates in todays society think it means genocide that hitlers plan was to kill all J-Ws. Thats the problem when you start changing the meaning of a word to conform to popular usage, fallacy ad populum
no need to change your superior reasoning abilities to knuckle under to inferior pressure, you are not logically inconsistent. Lets change the word owner to mean koko! yeh Now lets look at their property titles! yeh viola! any property yardmeat owns now belongs to koko! I can do the same thing to yardmeat that they did to hitler with the word exterminate. Hell why stop there! Now all property throughout the world now belongs to koko! woo hoo
It is silly to flip out over word usage. This is our world now and we can use whatever words we want to to express our ideas. Our ancestors used to crap in the woods. Is that something we should still do because they did it?
While I'm one who highly values the ability of anyone who speaks or writes well, & have ferocious pet peeves w/ regard to language (everyone today showing they're one of the cool kids by beginning their sentences w/ a completely inappropriate, "So..." in place of the apparently now un-hip, "well,...;" &, of course, the erroneous use of, "literally."), I must say that, "(original)late," despite having a confusingly unorthodox user-name, is correct in his contention. Your criticism is not only mistakenly unfair, but contains the very flaw you are condemning in, "irregardless," namely that his argument does not have a, "CRUXT," but a, "crux." And it is stated very clearly in his opening sentence-- that dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive-- which is nothing like your interpretation, "this is what others think so I think that way too." Really, there seems to me no reason for your objection: did you notice, in your dictionary, the definition for, "irregardless," is preceded by, "nonstand," the abbreviation for NON-STANDARD? This means that, when a person uses it, they're NOT SPEAKING CORRECTLY. So Webster's is not teaching bad habits. Now, there are instances when, as for effect, a person might WISH to employ non-standard language ("don't that beat all?" for example). It is up to the listener to decide if this is the case when he comes across it (in the case of, "irregardless," besides intending to parody the type of person who speaks in that incorrect manner, as if coming out of the mouth of Archie Bunker, for instance, there seems little other reason for its deliberate misusage). And Webster's is essentially saying that if someone speaks this way for no other reason than that they don't know any better, you are justified in judging them as uneducated.