I would bet that for most people they define the words like:
Hallucination - something that isn't real
Confabulation - a word that they have never heard of
That's what words are, anyway.
0 (featured previously on HN) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5
So does pedantry and prickliness.
Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. It's fine to want to do your part to steer language, but this is not one of those cases where it's important enough for anyone to be an asshole about it.
I'm a descriptivist. I don't believe language should have arbitrary rules, like which kinds of words you're allowed to end a sentence with.
However, to be an honest descriptivist, you must acknowledge that words are used in certain ways more frequently than others. Definitions attempt to capture the canonical usage of a word.
Therefore, if you want to communicate clearly, you should use words the way they are commonly understood to be used.
True. And that's generally how they order the definitions in the dictionary, in order of usage.
For example, "an unfounded or mistaken impression or notion" is indeed the 2nd definition in M-W for "hallucination", not the first.