leeway, then you must extend it to others. Since you chose to make a semantic point allowing for no leeway (though you now say it was not your intention to deny the leeway, that _is_ what you strongly implied by mistake), then I could not in fairness give you any.
Those who live by the nitpick shall get their own picked.
And you are absolutely wrong about the most common use of the word argument. I defy you to prove otherwise. The best you can do is cite dictionary statistics, if they provide them. And then it comes down to how much you trust a particular statistic.
For what it's worth, I tend to hear argument used most often in the negative sense. I rarely have to explain to people that it can be negative (rarely meaning never), but I quite frequently get rude looks if I "accuse" someone of arguing when I mean it in the neutral sense. So, my personal experience tells me that you are wrong about that. |
