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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 6150859" data-attributes="member: 8461">You're already going off track here. Noting that the OED has good cause to be cited as the most authoritative dictionary is a matter of fact, but you veer wildly away from that with your last sentence, which is filled with personal opinions on the "usefulness" of defining "normal" meanings of words. This is the basis for the mistakes you make later on.Their lack of obscurity is a tangential point that has no bearing on the wider discussion, making that a notation that adds nothing. Likewise for the searchability of one dictionary versus another, since it goes without saying that we're checking sources. Other than that, the relative age of a dictionary is meaningless, since that has nothing to do with its authority (hence why you listed that separately from "(b)"), and while the Merriam-Webster dictionary is certainly highly-respected, I suspect that if we were to rank the authority of the various English-language dictionaries, it would not surpass the OED.Or, as I've amply demonstrated, it's an action wherein the act itself does not possess truth as an element, rather than being concerned with the motivation of the actor.Leaving aside the examples you've posted, highlighting those two words does indeed prove something - that there's a legitimate alternative method of understanding what I've been saying.In that case, I would recommend that you read more widely, as there's a reason why the OED includes that meaning with such prominence.I'm not sure what you're attempting to prove here, save for repeating the definition a few times - something that is not falsified or perverted means that it has no element of untruth to it. If something is untrue unto itself, rather than being untrue due to the motivations of the person saying/doing it, then it's still untrue.It's not correct to call that a selective quotation - I'm quoting the operative part of the definition for the purposes of this discussion. The category heading is not ignored because it's pertinence here is self-evident. Something that is falsified or perverted is not correct; ergo, something that is disingenuous lacks correctness, with no statement towards the speaker's motives or state of mind.It says quite a bit more than that, but again, I fail to see how that's relevant - words can have multiple definitions, so unless you're claiming that every instance of a word's use means that it's employing every definition simultaneously, that's irrelevant. Given that, as you noted, the M-W defines "insincere" as being "not sincere" that pretty well closes the book on that argument. That is includes a secondary definition does not change the first definition.From what I can tell here, you're attempting to introduce some sort of dissonance between "insincere" and "not sincere," and so say that citing something as lacking the defining qualities of "sincere" does not mean that it's the same thing as "insincere." Needless to say, I look askance on that argument - when you find yourself saying that "words in English don't mean their literal meanings," you may want to reassess your thinking.Insofar as it goes the OED definition of "insincere" (Second Edition, volume seven, page 1,028) notes that it is "not sincere or genuine" as the first part of the very first definition given. It does also give mentions of dissembling, but the semicolon there shows that these are separated meanings (incidentally, it also cites "disingenuous," and explicitly states that this can be said or persons or their actions).Incorrect. This is another attempt on your part to try and state that any use of a word invokes all meanings of the word, no matter how disparate they might be in context.Not so, as demonstrated above.The only way to arrive at the above goal is through willful misinterpretation of the facts presented previously, which is a shame since it means that you're admitting that you're trying to twist my words. I had hoped that this was simply a case of you being tragically misguided, but it seems that you're deliberately going out of your way to find the most offensive meaning possible, even when expressly told that's not what I stated.Simply put, at this point I have pointed out that there are multiple, nuanced meanings for the word "disingenuous" and have shown how it can be applied to a person's statement (to say that it lacks an element of truth unto itself) without speaking in any regard to the person saying it.Your response has been to state that any use of a word must include all of its disparate meanings simultaneously, and that even though I've explained in great detail why my words not only didn't mean what you thought they did - and that my usage of them was in no way arcane - you continue to insist that they contained another meaning altogether, and that any instance of suggesting a particular definition of a word (rather than all of them at once) is "selecting quoting" from its definitions.There is, quite simply, no truth to your claims (notice that I'm referring to your claims in particular, rather than you in general), which makes them, in a notable irony, disingenuous.Certainly. I hope that it goes very well for her.</blockquote>

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