alt Hacker News> Let's take a look at a practical example.
Yes, lets! No need to complicate this: Ask a sufficiently large sample of people whether they think a non-owner who cultivates land on a farm is a farmer, and you will find that most do. For more confirmation, consult a dictionary to see whether the term includes this person (hint: it does).
> "farmer" is deemed to be the business owner
Since we are currently talking about what most people consider the word to mean as a general rule, not a specific person using it in a particular way, "farmer" is deemed to be more expansive than that, including non-owners whose job is cultivation on a farm. We know this not only from anecdotal observation but also because there are people whose job it is to try to determine how people use words, and that is what they have determined is most common.
> The meaning of the word is how the speaker (or author) has decided to use it.
Not quite. The meaning of a word is what most people say it is. If a speaker uses an incomprehensible, made-up word, and the audience derives no meaning from the word, then there is no meaning in the word. The speaker has failed to convey the meaning in their head, into words.
> [extensive snide defense of your personal attacks on HN posters]
Your insistence that your attacks on other posters are okay because you typed them onto your screen is unfortunate. Please consult the HN guidelines on the matter, rather than your pre-existing opinions.
> The meaning of a word is what most people say it is.
Interesting. Most people say that "gift" is a present. A much smaller set of people — those who speak German — say it is poison. That could lead to some awkwardness (even death). Luckily that's not how it actually works. That idea is logically flawed in so many ways.
> including non-owners whose job is cultivation on a farm.
Okay. Why, then, do you believe people are so concerned about the soybean farmers collecting a fixed wage? It is not like low soybean prices means anything to them. They get paid either way. Why would there be consideration for a bailout be extended to them on top?
> The speaker has failed to convey their meaning in their head, into words.
A rambling speaker may lose sight of what they were trying to say as the growing combination of words start to pile on, but a single word is highly unlikely to lose the intent. If you intended "foo" to mean one thing when you said it, you are still likely to consider "foo" to mean the same thing when you revisit what you produced a few minutes later. So, no, this is not true in any meaningful sense. The meaning is encoded just fine.
Third-party consumers may misinterpret it, sure, but that's their problem. It wasn't produced for them anyway.
> Your insistence that your attacks on other posters are okay because you typed them onto your screen is unfortunate.
"Okay" is found nowhere in said comment. Rather, it explains that what you claim is impossible. A computer screen cannot attack you. It goes on to speculate on what you did experience and that remains the most likely explanation.
> Please consult the HN guidelines on the matter
I see nothing in there about summoning a computer screen to launch an attack, I'm afraid. It is very possible that we do not have a shared understanding of words here (we've already established that as being so elsewhere). Your usage holds force, of course. You are the producer in this case. But that does mean I am in the position of being the consumer misinterpreting it, possibly.