In 7th grade I learned that the word masturbation means to pollute with the hand. As a result of that bit of linguistical knowledge, whenever I see someone throwing garbage on the ground at a park, playground, or school auditorium I yell at them, Hey, you! Stop masturbating in public, especially while you’re in plain sight of the children!
People usually give me a frowning for my unexpected verbal outburst, but technically it’s a correct use of the word, and technically is almost always the best kind of correct.
On a related note, ejaculate means to say something quickly and suddenly, to blurt out. Really, it does, but to tell a person that I ejaculated while watching someone masturbate in the park, takes any otherwise reasonable conversation in an entirely different direction from technically correct intentions. It’s the difference between semantics and pragmatics in language; I won’t be making that mistake again anytime soon.
—DG.
Inside Doug's Head 