this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Yes. Ling PhD here -- after teaching for 10+ years, the thing most people consistently do not understand about language is: the dictionary does not define what words mean. Dictionaries at best are a representation of what words meant at one time, and those meanings change quickly and pervasively enough that there is constantly a non-zero* number of words for which the dictionary is already wrong.
*in actuality it's probably significantly higher than what is connotated by "non-zero"
Yes, this is the excuse I use too when I mess up the pronunciation of a word and people have an issue with it. They understood the meaning so the communication was successful which is the point.
100%. If people get the point, that's a successful transfer of information. You may have transferred more than you wanted (like the implication that you've never heard the word before), but you did complete the transfer.