Whenever someone says something like, “It’s just an argument about terms/meanings/definitions/semantics” I want to dope slap ’em. “Now there abide these three: phonemes, syntax and semantics; and the greatest of these is semantics.”
Meanings of words (terms, whatever) is the very POINT of language. Clarifying and making terms as nailed down and unambiguous, as full of MEANING, as possible is not something that is “just” anything. Without such, any interlocution is just “Sound and fury, signifying nothing,” or at least nothing useful.1
*From the Bard to the Beegees:
Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read.
*heh*
Beegees: It’s only words,and words are all I have to take your heart away.
1Ah, reminds one of most contemporary “music,” the babblings of Mass MEdia Hivemind Podpeople, and Academia Nut Fruitcakes, doesn’t it?