I’ve said it before, but I’m giving into the temptation to reiterate what runs through my mind every time I hear or read the phrase, “It’s only semantics”.
Semantics is the single most important thing about language. Without it, spoken language becomes nothing but (tautology alert!) meaningless whistles and clicks and moans and grunts and written language becomes nothing but weird squiggles, signifying nothing.
Now there abide these three:
Phonemes (sounds and their and written phoneme analogs)
Syntax (structure) and
Semantics (MEANING), and the greatest of these is semantics.
“It’s only (or just) semantics” is an utterance by an idiot, full of sound (and whimpering), signifying nothing* (at least nothing useful, save for confirming that the one saying it has no argument or defensible position).
Insincere apologies to The Bard and all that…
* Aside: For something with much,much more sense than the “nothing (useful) conveyed by the idiotic “It’s just semantics” try this disquisition on Nothing. Not all that edifying, but it did keep me in stitches for days after I first read it. Imagine breaking out in laughter in the middle of a Greek class. The prof was understanding once I had explained and shared the article with him. Nice guy.