One of my biggest pet peeves is semantic pedantry, especially if it hinges on invalidating colloquial usage of a term.

It’s one thing to correct somebody who mistakingly uses a similar-sounding but different-meaning word than what they intended. A good example of this is correcting someone who says “equivocal” when that person actually meant “equivalent.”

However, it’s another thing entirely to fail to understand that words are shaped by how society uses them, not merely a dictionary or an educational textbook. An example of this would be someone saying that it’s invalid for humans to identify as asexual as a sexual orientation because in biology, the term “asexual” describes organisms that can reproduce without sexual activity.

Being unable to differentiate between connotation and denotation isn’t the level of intellect people think it is. It’s actually the contrary, as it shows a lack of nuance and an effort to grasp at straws only done by small-minded people who think that solely adhering to literal definitions and rejecting common usage is somehow indicative of some heightened degree of intelligence.

I felt inspired to say this because someone on a YouTube video wrote a comment pertaining to Indigenous people, and a “scholar” responded, “What you’re saying makes no sense because everyone is Indigenous to somewhere on the planet.”

It’s the degree of smugness that is so damn disproportionate with how warranted the smugness actually is that gets me.

Also, this isn’t referring to instances where discussing the meaning of a word actually serves some purpose and isn’t just nitpicking. That’s a whole other subject.

Basically, fuck these people!