Opinions are facts. They are facts about the person concerned, and about how they interpret their experience. Dictionaries give meanings, but not necessarily all the meanings, because language is very fluid.

In fact there are two traditional ways of viewing dictionaries. One is that they lay down the law as to what a word means - and that is what it means, until a later dictionary amends it. The other is that they provide snapshots of how words mean at a particular time within a particular society,and perhaps what they meant at other times and places - but that the real determinant of what a word means in actual use lies in the intention of the person using the word. (They can both be useful ways of seeing things, according to what's under discussion.)

That link kat gave didn't come up with the goods for me either. I'd like to have read it. "...speech surrenders to talk". I rather enjoy the game where you take two words which mean almost the same thing, and use whatever distinction you can draw between them as a basis for a theoretical structure.

I think Q misses a crucial,point that kat was making - which is that it is pretty clear that around the Mudcat there is a lot of interest in language as such - what it means, what it doesn't mean, what it can mean. Otherwise we wouldn't have threads like this.