Nobody has a single authority on what words mean. That doesn't mean terms don't have established meanings, and it'll make things difficult for you if you insist on using them differently.
If you can't understand why words might mean something completely different to anyone who's got a completely different context built around it, you are either ignorant or too arrogant to care either way.
It's important to be able to construct specific meanings. You don't need terms to do that, and you run a major communication risk by relying on terms that you aren't willing to define. And if you define them first, then you can use them however you like.
Merriam-Webster is not the ultimate authority on the English language. If people start using the word to mean something else, then, ipso facto, that's what it means.
If you try to nail it down to a specific definition, you'll wind up in contradictions. English doesn't work like that; when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, no more and no less.
There's a massive difference between changing your own word usage to use a term that you think is a better description, and attempting to police other people's word usage.
Words can have multiple meanings. And, some of those meanings can be based on ignorance, bias and sloppiness. It is fair to critique the use of words when they obscure actual meaning.
Sorry to hammer the point home, but I'm not saying "words can't have different meanings". I'm saying it's not useful to rename "meanings" as "social constructs".
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