Wow, Sula, you should have seen my post in the "Nazi" thread (due to peoples' apparent disgust at the "casual" use of an inflammatory word). Here was my two cents on the "living language" concept:

"...please do not feel personally attacked by individuals who use this term in their vernacular, as this word is doing what every word does eventually in a language, it evolves and gets incororated into the vocabulary. While you may feel it is losing its particular meaning, it is being used to explain the idea of intolerence. If you wnat to make sure it conveys the same sense of horror, feel free to remind people exactly what images it does convey. If anything, you either help them more correctly convey an idea, or perhaps you now learned that they feel just as passionately about an injustice as you..."

"Language is our only way of precisely conveying our thoughts, and English is a "living language", and with it, we all learn to express ourselves in an infinitely growing way.

Two such examples of this concept, and its limitations are the Hopi and Korean languages. I may be reciting Urban Legend here, so if anyone knows the details, please clue me in, but in a nutshell, at different times, these languages prevented a very simple task from being carried out due to the limitations of words.

In both cases, someone was trying to translate the Bible, so that they could be taught in the native tongue.

In the Hopi tongue, there was no word to convey the concept of a savior, and/or single omnipotent God. Their pantheon did just not apply in a collective sense, and they couldn't find the words to convey it.

In Korean, it was a similar situation, but it revolved around the concept of Brotherly love. Their literally was no word as "love" in that context, and their project suffered."

I think what I am trying get to is that while I do wish to have a better grasp of the English language, sometimes words mutate into a different thought, but still allow the speaker/writer to convey their ideas, and I hope that my fellow English speakers can appreciate my expression, regardless of a small faux-pas on my part.

To wit, I was once referring to my hesitation in an action that was being asked of me, and I referred to my "reticence", at which point I was rudely told I couldn't have been reticent, as I was not "speaking", I was "doing".

After crawling home and devouring my dictionary, I met with the classic dilemma of "The Letter of the Law vs. the Spirit of the Law".

To the interrupter, I concede to entry #1: "inclined to be silent or uncommunicative in speech"

But as the interruptee, I will beg to differ, citing entry #2, "restrained in expression, presentation, or appearance", as "restraining" my "expression" of doing the obviously odious, yet completely forgotten, task at hand...

I hope that I can at least make a tale more interesting by adding to the imagery with interesting words. If perhaps I screw them up a bit, I would love to know, and to learn, but sometimes, you just need to let it go. Eventually the word will change, leaving you with the challenge of inventing your own words... :)

Domenico