And here we have the nub or the problem:

"What you gave us as 'definitions' are 'misconceptions' of what folk is"

No no no no no no NO!!

They are genuine, democratically-derived definitions, and they have as much validity as yours.

You do not own the word, Jim, not do the people who wrote those books you're so keen on.

There IS no one correct conception of any word (except those defined in law). Language means what those who use it understand it to mean - doctionaries merely record the changes, and academics define things, then choose a word to label the definition.

Folk is not defined in law, and has merely been appropriated (and then abandoned) by some academics as a label for something they wanted to describe.

Therefore you cannot call any popular definition of it a misconception. You may say it is to YOU, but NOT that it is universally or intrinsically so.

My list is of genuine, (if often incompatible) definitions. And they are genuine because significant communities believe them to be so. Yours may be the most common (though I dispute that), the best defined and the most resonant - but no-one else has to accept it. To demand that they do is unreasonable and unfair.


"You mentioned 'public domain' in your list of 'definitions'; am I to take it that you are happy to relinquish all claims to your own compositions? "

That is THE most bonkers misconstruction I've yet seen you make Jim. I gave a list of songs that some people call folk. Some are copyright some are not. It matters in some of the definitions and not in others.

Tom