The way I see it society spends an awful amount of time deciding what words mean, what they don't mean, should they be used shouldn't they be used etc etc. We can expand this to phrases as well. All too often we argue the semantics of a word or collection of words. For example...
"Man/Male"
"Woman/Female"
The transgender debates often boil down to utterly circular arguments over the definition. We can add the term "gender" too.
"Socialist"
"Democracy"
"Libertarian" (good god libertarian twitter is... interesting)
"Art"
"Religion"
"Racist"
"[Any racial slur and its usage]"
At the end of the day who should decide what a word means? Should we determine this by common usage of the majority of society? Should words have a fixed meaning? Should words be said or not said based on the skin color, gender or orientation of a person? Words ultimately are simply a means of expression of an idea but we know word choice can help influence people.
That said how should words be defined and used in the context of a conversation or debate? I see three options.
1. Words should be used based on how the user has used them with that specific intent. If a person uses a word and it clashes with the formal terminology or someone's preferred way of using the word it should not matter. While the listener cannot always know what it is intended perfectly they should not take umbrage with the "misuse" of the word, instead adapt their understanding to the idea the speaker was trying convey.
2. Words should be used based on how the listener uses them. Again here we have a scenario where imperfect knowledge of conversation partners means errors can occur but the usage of the word when known should be tailored to the preference of the one hearing the message. The speaker has an obligation to try to use the word the way the listener wants to hear it.
3. Words should be used based on their strict meaning formally defined via some theoretically objective resource (say a dictionary - top term). In this case all parties agree to use the word in practice and can correct others when a word seems to be used in a different way.
We can't be hypocritical about these things though, we should pick ONE way of going about it as an ideal and try to follow it. In that case which is best solution? And could you fit your conversation patterns to that on a consistent basis?
Now honestly that's too much effort for a daily conversation but when debating/discussing issues it would make sense to pick one way of going about things. That way we could end the semantic debate spiral that happens over and over across thousands of debates every day.