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Comment by skh | Hacker News Reader

Far too often people confuse dictionary definitions and colloquial usage. Dictionary definitions always lag colloquial usage. The meaning of words comes from their usage and the quote you referred to seems like someone being intentionally obdurate to linguistic changes. The person acknowledges that there are people who use the word ignorant in a pejorative way.

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OK, I'll bite. Do you live or work in an environment where you could call someone ignorant and be understood to mean only that there is some specific bit of knowledge they don't posses, without making a larger accusation of intellectual incompetence?

Where?

I try to be sensitive to issues of usage like this because civility does not come easily to me, and I have to be careful of what I say lest I inadvertently offend. And I am confident that when I have heard the word used, it is almost invariably in the larger sense. Use in the narrow sense tends to be by foreigners, who seem to be looking for a translation into English, and could easily not know the broader implied meaning.

I think you misunderstand my post. The person who was quoted as saying that “ignorant” isn’t pejorative since the dictionary definition of the word isn’t pejorative is being an ass. Colloquial usage trumps dictionary definitions when it comes to interpreting speech.

Depends on the context, too. Especially in non-casual contexts, where more rigor is expected, you take greater care to use and define terms more consistently in order to make communication more accurate and effective.

Oops. My bad. Sorry.

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