So if you claimed a car is not an automobile because most people would typically call it a car I'm somehow wrong in recognizing that a car is also an automobile? We have to apply consistent logic throughout the use of that language do we not?
But that's not what I said, is it? Just because a term is not the
single most common term for something doesn't mean it is somehow NEVER EVER used.
The vast, vast, vast majority of English-speaking humans do not,
and would not, refer to hot dogs as sandwiches. They would be
confused by that choice of words, or at the very least, be uncertain and request clarification. At which point, your precious logical categorization has achieved absolutely crap-all.
By comparison, "automobile" (or "auto") is still used and understood to refer to the same thing that "car" does....but "carriage"
would confuse most English speakers, even though "car" literally derives from "horseless
carriage." "Carriage"
today refers to something pulled by a creature, usually a horse but sometimes something else (an elephant, typically; if one wished to refer to a person-pulled carriage, the typical term is "rickshaw"). "Auto" by itself is also frequently used for car-related things, e.g. businesses like Auto Zone, and "automotive" is used, often as an adjective or label, e.g. the "automotive" department in a store.
And, to answer your final question: No, we
do not "have to apply consistent logic throughout the use of that language." That's my whole point. Language
is usage. That usage can--and almost always is!--at least somewhat inconsistent. This is both the beauty and the terror of language. It is, necessarily, imperfect, exploitable, contradictory. In a word:
flawed. But those flaws are also opportunities, for things like jokes, poetry, and music. Consider that a single word can have two different senses, and a joke can hinge on those senses. Or that one can write a phrase which transitions between two different senses beautifully
when sung, but which is awkward at best to write in letters (the FFXIV song "Close in the Distance" does this:
Guiding, lighting the way
No time for mourning
rises on a land reborn from the ashes
'Neath the heavens
The official lyrics list "mourning", but notice how the third line here lacks a subject for the word "rises." That's because the songwriter cleverly exploited two different words that sound similar or identical in most dialects of English: "mourning" and "morning." This cannot be properly written in text, but it sounds perfectly fine when spoken aloud, or in this case, sung aloud. This is--intentionally!--breaking the "consistent logic throughout the use of that language,"
in order to do something both clever and beautiful.
Or, to quote Emerson (emphasis added): "A
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Consistency in and of itself has no value; it is only valuable for what you gain by it. One
should be inconsistent, if that inconsistency reaps a greater virtue; that's specifically what Emerson was advocating, that you speak in strong words today what you truly and sincerely believe, and if you truly and sincerely believe differently tomorrow, don't be
afraid to change just because what you declare tomorrow is not consistent with what you declared today.
Language is defined as well as used
No. It is only used. Definitions are always subculture-specific.
Always. That's literally how language works. Words do not come to us from some divine source; they are created by mortal hands and mortal mouths.
Within certain subcultures, it can be useful to have a clean, precise, perfect definition. Mathematics is a good example of this, where terms get such diamond-perfect definitions....unless and until there comes a notation conflict or a disagreement or, or, or. Even in the
one place where the vagaries and insufficiencies of reality fail to meaningfully impinge, language is still driven by usage; a definition only matters if people actually do use it.
There is a reason all respected English dictionaries today--including the one you yourself quoted earlier--
do not even attempt to be prescriptivist. They are descriptivist. They catalogue how words are used, and on the basis of that usage, determine a definition, so that people can communicate more easily. If you want prescription, you have to look to a style guide...which isn't about
defining terms. It's about telling people wise, circumspect, or appropriate usage. Lexicography is fundamentally descriptivist, so your entire premise is false from its foundation.
By what moral authority can you tell me it's okay or not okay to act under a double standard? ;-)
I am not. I am telling you that you are incorrectly understanding what lexicographers do, what their publications are explicitly intended for--not a definition, but
their mission statement--and, on the basis of that incorrect understanding, passing judgment on something that does not and cannot actually merit judgment.
Language is usage. That means we must be mindful of when and where we speak. This is nothing new or special. Even an eight-year-old child understands there are things you can say to your peers you'd never say to your grandparent(s) on Thanksgiving.
When it becomes an issue is when someone who doesn't speak the language well and we're trying to communicate with them in basic words. We shouldn't assume everyone with whom we speak is literate in the language that we're speaking. Not everyone has a smart phone handy to translate.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. Circumlocution is understood as an important thing--but circumlocution, especially for someone with a severely incomplete vocabulary, is also understood to be actively analogistic, breaking definitions left and right. This is not helpful to your position; if anything, it is actively
harmful to it, because by your standards, anyone who ever uses a word outside its precise, "consistent" definition is necessarily wrong and must be corrected. You are not in any way an ESL student's ally here; you would be harshly correcting their "wrongly" used words because they don't follow consistent logic, even though their inconsistency is actually leveraged to communicate when their vocabulary fails them due to not having had enough time to learn more.
This goes back to my last point above. If a Japanese exchange student here refers to "coffee" as soup in translation they aren't actually wrong. It's just not the common usage of the term. Any in speaking with them my recognition of coffee as also a soup is beneficial to understanding what they are saying.
Is it? Or is it detrimental, because you are encouraging them toward a usage that will alienate them from most English speakers?
The question I would ask is why would we feel entitled to tell that Japanese student that their language is wrong and coffee is not also a soup or sauce. What you seem to be telling me is there's an entire country that recognizes the similarities of soup, sauce, and juice but it's wrong for me to agree with them because that's not how you see it here?
I am saying--as I have said all along--that definitions are subculture-specific, and that one must pay careful attention to context.
Maybe, possibly, it is useful to work with a Japanese student who is still learning the absolute bare-bones basics of English to say, "You could view it that way." But you absolutely, 110% should tell them, "Most English speakers would find that choice of words strange or even confusing. It's better to just call it 'coffee' or call it a 'drink,' because that's something almost everyone who speaks English would understand."
We cannot agree that language is usage when language is also defined. We learn the language and use the language from those definitions.
Prescriptivism is both a logical and a practical dead-end. Consistency is not, in and of itself, a virtue in communication. Successful communication is. Consistency may help with that; and, inside a single subculture, consistency is often, but not always, desirable (see: poetry and music and jokes, all important elements of communication within a single subculture that
will break consistency whenever it is productive to do so).
Between subcultures, however, it may not only be undesirable, it's often practically or logically impossible.
