"We have no right as individuals or as a group to alter that language" Actually we can and do. Poets and writers alter language by creative abuse with people notice and copy. Slang that starts as a joke is gradually assimilated. But mostly it is not deliberately altered. It happens as a natural, democratic evolution over time. This is why you are so terribly, terribly wrong to blame people. They are not doing it on purpose. They are just going with a flow which has eddied and tumbled beautifully down the ages. Why else is your prose different to William Shakespeare's? So yes: "the definition is a summary of the component parts, not a random sample of society at large's opinion." Exactly so. But the word used to label that summary of component parts ("Folk") now ALSO has OTHER meanings, which do NOT seek to label that summary of component pats, but to label OTHER things. And that is what it does.
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