And millions of illiterates think that "literally" means something other than "literally", too, but that doesn't make it correct, clear, or acceptable.
Words mean things.
Words mean things.
Yes, they do. And language changes, as your parent points out. One of my pet peeves is those who use "steep learning curve" to mean something difficult to learn as opposed to its original meaning of something that's easily learned based on a skill vs time chart.[0] If I were to continually point it out when it's misused, people would get annoyed with me and the amount of change I would accomplish approaches zero. The language moves on.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_curve
Edited to fix typo.
its == possessive form of pronoun "it"
it's == contraction of "it is" or (rarely) "it has"As an aside, using indentation as you did makes the text difficult to read, particularly on mobile, due to the side-scrolling it necessitates.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...