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To students of language, it’s a battle of descriptivism - analyzing and documenting the real-world use of language - versus prescriptivism - the idea that one manner of language use or set of rules is better than another.

Thevenot said that he has long found the “folk prescriptivism” of competitive Scrabble’s “armchair lexicographers” vexing.

The Berlin interpretation, with its mix of high-value and low-value characteristics, is the most comprehensive definition, and even that is attacked for its prescriptivism and its archaism.