The Descriptivism–Prescriptivism War, Part 1: Battlelines

On September 6, 2016, Merriam-Webster tweeted the following: 

It’s fine to use mad to mean “angry”—even if doing so makes some people mad.

And boy did it make one person mad—er, angry! 

To this day Merriam-Webster’s Twitter account is full of information about words and how we use them. It posts a word of the day, giving the pronunciation and definition from their files. It identifies words that people are suddenly looking up more, usually because of a prominent use in media. And it discusses usage...