[ShabbosGoy]

A word is simply a shared reference to a concept. The consensus is around whether or not that reference is valid anymore.

Here’s a concrete example: “citizen” meant something completely different 100 years ago. At that time it meant “member of the set of landowners”, which resolved to “white male landowner”. Now the concept of citizen is much different and a lot more contentious.

[lmm]

"citizen" is meaningful because people do have a shared understanding of its meaning - people who are arguing about who is and isn't a citizen are still agreeing about what a citizen is. This article doesn't seem to be claiming that the culture at Intel has the aspects that people normally refer to when they say "toxic culture", it's trying to express something different - there's no factual disagreement, only a semantic one, which means the word has failed to convey meaning.

[EpicEng]

>Now the concept of citizen is much different and a lot more contentious

Right, and _both parties agree to the current definition_. That's the entire point.