Again - as often appears to be the case here - the use appears to be contentious not because of what it means, but because some people consider it pejorative .
Being fairly literally-minded, one of the first things I like to do when discussing a topic with people is establish our semantics. That is, to unpack our respective meanings and assumptions of the terms and concepts we use to (hopefully) communicate.
So a practice that I find interesting and often troubling is that of pejoration of words. As well as the complementary process of melioration, but that tends to be more subtle. That is, the idea that a word can be good or bad in itself. This requi…
