Heh. I suspect we could argue this all day, partly because there is very little we're actually disagreeing on, and I suspect much that we do agree on (or at lea

Heh. I suspect we could argue this all day, partly because there is very little we're actually disagreeing on, and I suspect much that we do agree on (or at least, I find your arguments well-stated and have upvoted accordingly, and mostly agree with them.) As I said in my original post, I doubt there's a way of halting the shift in meaning in real-world usage. I just find that it impoverishes the word and degrades the ability to express something that is worth expressing. I don't, in fact, have any problem with any of your three examples. The Twitter one is the most problematic, but it still works because I disagree with "users don't create new users"—they kind of do: if 10% of users convince one friend to join, then you have exponential growth. If size were proportional to the network effects, which are quadratic, then the statement would bother me. And it might be, for all I know, but given that (1) there's a decent argument for it being exponential and (2) it's not like there's that big of a difference between a quadratic curve and an exponential curve bounded at the very least by the world population, well... I guess I'm not that pedantic! As for the 3rd sentence, what kind of jerk would I be to reject such a warm and honest expression of your love? ;-) More seriously, once something is figurative then keeping the original meaning of exponential enhances the declaration—there's a subtle implication that love produces love. I've gotta stop replying to this thread, though!