Recently I replied to an online point that said that if the US enacts laws that enforce Christian views, the country will be a theocracy. I pointed out that all or nearly all European countries for most of history have met that criterion and that the USA itself was a “theocracy” by that measure until at least the 1960s. The person making the post rebuked me for being a “prescriptivist” and implied it’s consistent with being a libertarian.

First, it’s not a political issue. I don’t advocate laws requiring people to use words with standard meanings, except in legal documents. Aside from that, I’m not exactly a prescriptivist. I prefer to consider myself a “consistentist.” Whatever meaning you give to a word, stick with it and don’t conflate it with other definitions. If you want to use “glory” to mean “a nice knock-down argument,” don’t use it to mean “splendor” at the same time.

Many words have multiple meanings, and they develop more meanings over time. Quantum physicists have reused common words like “charm” for properties that have no relationship to the traditional meaning. That’s fine, since they don’t claim a “charmed quark” is charmed in the esthetic or magical sense.

Equivocating on a word’s meaning can indicate mere sloppy thinking or outright dishonesty. As an example of the latter, in 2006 President Bush said “The United States does not torture.” He was relying on an equivocation between a narrow legal definition of torture and the commonsense understanding of the term to make it appear that the US government wasn’t intentionally inflicting physical trauma on prisoners.

Or consider this fallacious claim for God’s existence: “The universe acts according to natural laws. Laws imply a lawgiver. Therefore there is a being (or beings) who has enacted natural laws.” A natural law is simply a description of consistent, predictable behavior in nature. It’s a different meaning of the word from “a piece of legislation.” Saying that natural laws must have been legislated is a play on two different meanings.

Equivocation can run in two directions. The word “communism,” with a small c, often means a system where people elect to have all their possessions in common. While such an arrangement can damage the members’ autonomy, it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights as long as participation is voluntary. It’s completely compatible with capitalism. With a large C, “Communism” refers to an authoritarian state that claims to own everything. Accusing people in a commune of supporting big-C Communism is wrong unless there’s specific evidence that they do. On the other side of the coin, touting the relatively harmless nature of a voluntary commune as an example of how big-C Communism works is highly dishonest.

Getting back to the first example, if you define theocracy in a way that includes most of the governments in the world’s history, the term loses its impact. Vatican City is a theocracy; so is Iran. But if we define the word to include modern-day Denmark and Austria, we dilute it into meaninglessness. Blasphemy laws violate human rights, but they don’t by themselves make a nation a theocracy.

However you decide to use words, stick with the meanings you’ve chosen. Don’t change definitions in midstream, and watch out for people who play word games.