After Fal's last followup I went back and re-read the q. Who gets to decide? Time's Man of the Year

When does the prescriptivist eventually accept a new usage in spite of his inclinations? After it has been around long enough to find its way into the very oldest editions of Merriam, Random, etc

As a former prescriptivist I used to rail against the idea of assigning a wildly divergent meaning to an old word, suggesting instead the coinage of a new one. When I realized mine was but a voice in the wilderness, however, I turned in my credentials

dalehileman