> But is prevalent usage not a valid measure of acceptability?

It's exactly this central dogma that I question; an arbitrary number of people can be wrong about something without it magically becoming correct.

The final nail in the coffin is: if anything goes as long as it's popular, then I can just go right ahead and be "wrong" with my preferred usage of logic (could care less) and consistency (up means up, you can't suddenly declare it now also means down) anyway.

Before literally came to mean figuratively, there was a transition period where that usage was wrong, and then suddenly became correct when some imaginary threshold was crossed; so I'm just temporarily wrong and will, any day now, also see my preferred meaning of "up" (to mean down, of course with no new word for the original meaning of down because why bother with anything sensible) come to be canon. I just need to make enough viral tiktok videos and then truth vs falsity is my plaything :)

> It's exactly this central dogma that I question; an arbitrary number of people can be wrong about something without it magically becoming correct.

Language is arbitrary and when enough people agree that a word means something, it does.

Do you insist that "nice" can only mean "foolish" and not kind because that was its original meaning, or do you accept that it now means "kind"?

If the latter, you also actually agree that the meaning of words can change once enough people use them a new way.

See also: https://archive.org/details/alicesadventur00carr