Taking your question seriously, yes. Two major schools of thought are "prescriptive" vs. "descriptive". This terms are usually applied to the noun "grammar" but it works for vocabulary, too. See: http://amyrey.web.unc.edu/classes/ling-101-online/tutorials/...
Descriptively, breakfast is clearly an early-morning meal eaten within an hour or two of the end of sleep. There is also, at least in America where I can speak for it, a set of associated "breakfast foods", making it reasonable to "have breakfast for dinner" and most people know what you mean. (i.e., even my 5-year-old knew precisely what that meant when I first said it, so one should carefully consider one's internet-pedant options before claiming that makes no sense :) ) Prescriptively one could make a case for "the meal that breaks your fast", though I daresay it would be a rather weak case. The term "fast" is almost dead in modern American English, though it may be making a comeback via things like Intermittent Fasting: https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-beginners-guid... (Which, for the purposes of this post, I'm merely pointing out a word usage. Though I do it myself now, I'm not defending or advocating it here.)
There are more and less literal understandings of words. Breakfast, as commonly understood, is meant as the first meal of the day, and specifically the morning meal.
Referring to your first meal, at 8pm without having slept away the day, as "breakfast" is outside most people's understanding of the word, though it is, strictly speaking, correct.
It's like the various meanings and uses of the word "decimate". The literal and historical meaning is to remove 1 out of 10 of a group, such as in combat against enemy forces or as punishment of some group or something. Today, it means removing a large percentage. "The army was decimated" today means that a large percentage (subjective) was killed or wounded.
Subjective meaning: Some might say 10% is large, others might mean 80%. And it depends on the initial size. 10% of 100 is only 10, that doesn't seem large. But 10% of 1,000,000 is 10,000, that's substantial though the percentage itself may appear small.
I believe he's being uncharitable to the descriptive point of view when he calls the prescriptive point of view the "words have meaning" point of view.
To flip the bias there, you could call the prescriptive point of view the "words have meaning ordained by God and it doesn't matter what anyone actually says" point of view, and call the descriptive point of view the "evidence-based" point of view.
When people say "breakfast", do they mean the moment of breaking one's fast? A prescriptivist would say "yes, obviously, it's right there in the word". A descriptivist would say "probably not, because everybody understands what it means to 'skip breakfast'."
jerf|9 years ago
Descriptively, breakfast is clearly an early-morning meal eaten within an hour or two of the end of sleep. There is also, at least in America where I can speak for it, a set of associated "breakfast foods", making it reasonable to "have breakfast for dinner" and most people know what you mean. (i.e., even my 5-year-old knew precisely what that meant when I first said it, so one should carefully consider one's internet-pedant options before claiming that makes no sense :) ) Prescriptively one could make a case for "the meal that breaks your fast", though I daresay it would be a rather weak case. The term "fast" is almost dead in modern American English, though it may be making a comeback via things like Intermittent Fasting: https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-beginners-guid... (Which, for the purposes of this post, I'm merely pointing out a word usage. Though I do it myself now, I'm not defending or advocating it here.)
fragsworth|9 years ago
Jtsummers|9 years ago
Referring to your first meal, at 8pm without having slept away the day, as "breakfast" is outside most people's understanding of the word, though it is, strictly speaking, correct.
It's like the various meanings and uses of the word "decimate". The literal and historical meaning is to remove 1 out of 10 of a group, such as in combat against enemy forces or as punishment of some group or something. Today, it means removing a large percentage. "The army was decimated" today means that a large percentage (subjective) was killed or wounded.
Subjective meaning: Some might say 10% is large, others might mean 80%. And it depends on the initial size. 10% of 100 is only 10, that doesn't seem large. But 10% of 1,000,000 is 10,000, that's substantial though the percentage itself may appear small.
rspeer|9 years ago
To flip the bias there, you could call the prescriptive point of view the "words have meaning ordained by God and it doesn't matter what anyone actually says" point of view, and call the descriptive point of view the "evidence-based" point of view.
When people say "breakfast", do they mean the moment of breaking one's fast? A prescriptivist would say "yes, obviously, it's right there in the word". A descriptivist would say "probably not, because everybody understands what it means to 'skip breakfast'."