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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • This is just so wrong. English dictionaries are descriptive: they describe how the language is being used.

    In 1961 people like you threw a fit that “ain’t” was added to Webster’s, despite its first known use over 200 years earlier.

    English has no ultimate arbiter of “proper” use; it changes as people use it and dictionaries are a reference for how it is being used, not how it ought to be used.

    Language is a living, changing thing. It doesn’t matter how many grammar nazis oppose the changes, if enough people start using a word or phrase in a different way, that becomes the “right” way to use the word/phrase. “Nice” used to mean foolish, “meat” once meant food in general, and in my lifetime “gay” went from “happy” to “homosexual”.

    If you can’t accept that language changes, you’re gonna have a bad time.