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<blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 3674182" data-attributes="member: 32536">You seem to have a poor grasp of how language works. There is no such thing as the &quot;one true definition&quot; of a word. The only thing that matters is the widespread use of a term. No one person has the right to tell others that word usage is incorrect. This is the reason we get regional dialect and lingual shift, after all.In the case of your example, certainly, the scientific definition says that a tomato is a fruit. This is a scientific definition, so it only applies to scientific discussion, since that is the field of discussion where such precision is required. And even for other people of authority on the matter, farmers and nutritional experts, tomatos still count as vegetables. Regardless, the scientific definition is only more accurate when having a scientific discussion of plant biology, and does not override the layman supermarket use of the term.Even with that taken care of, I reject your claim that this analogy is applicable to the current discussion. After all, the two uses of the term RPG do not even refer to the same thing. Essentially, it is a single word with two distinct definitions. One definition is &quot;a genre of videogames&quot;, and the other definition is &quot;a type of game played with dice and imagination&quot; or something more elaborate.A better example of what is going is the use of the word &quot;plant&quot;. One definition is &quot;a biological organism that is non-motile and often absorbs sunlight&quot;, and another is &quot;a factory&quot;. If you were to claim that a factory could not be called a plant, since biologists defined plants to be a certain thing, it simply would not make any sense, since both definitions are commonly accepted. The same thing is happening here in the discussion of &quot;RPG&quot;.&nbsp;So you are explicitly stating here that pen and paper RPGs are better then electronic RPGs? Thus, you are stating that your fun is better than someone else's fun. How can you say that is anything other than elitist?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TwinBahamut, post: 3674182, member: 32536"] You seem to have a poor grasp of how language works. There is no such thing as the "one true definition" of a word. The [i]only[/i] thing that matters is the widespread use of a term. No one person has the right to tell others that word usage is incorrect. This is the reason we get regional dialect and lingual shift, after all. In the case of your example, certainly, the [i]scientific[/i] definition says that a tomato is a fruit. This is a scientific definition, so it [i]only applies to scientific discussion[/i], since that is the field of discussion where such precision is required. And even for other people of authority on the matter, farmers and nutritional experts, tomatos still count as vegetables. Regardless, the scientific definition is only more accurate when having a scientific discussion of plant biology, and does not override the layman supermarket use of the term. Even with that taken care of, I reject your claim that this analogy is applicable to the current discussion. After all, the two uses of the term RPG do not even refer to the same thing. Essentially, it is a single word with two distinct definitions. One definition is "a genre of videogames", and the other definition is "a type of game played with dice and imagination" or something more elaborate. A better example of what is going is the use of the word "plant". One definition is "a biological organism that is non-motile and often absorbs sunlight", and another is "a factory". If you were to claim that a factory could not be called a plant, since biologists defined plants to be a certain thing, it simply would not make any sense, since both definitions are commonly accepted. The same thing is happening here in the discussion of "RPG". So you are explicitly stating here that pen and paper RPGs are better then electronic RPGs? Thus, you are stating that your fun is better than someone else's fun. How can you say that is anything [i]other[/i] than elitist? [/QUOTE]

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