Educated Natives

Q&A question: Is the usage of the native speaker the final measure of a definition, or can native speakers, as with everyone else, be wrong?

The specter of the Educated Native Speaker was raised both by Hirsch and in class. The claim was something to the effect that any definition must accomodate the usage of the definiendum by the educated native speaker. This strikes me as patently false, as an educated native speaker is not infallible and may be incorrect. My calling a table a pig should not alter the definitions of either of those terms, despite the fact that I am a native speaker of English and am relatively well educated.

To this Tom objected, not verbatim of course, that it is insufficient for a single native speaker, but if educated native speakers as a whole use the term a certain way than the definition ought to accomodate this. He is partially correct; Hirsch did not have in mind my single wrong speaker example. But I still think the my general objection holds. Definitions of words ought to possess both clarity and utility. If, as a whole, the mass of educated english speakers began conflating two terms, say Argument and Inference (not too far fetched as they are closely related, but importantly not synonymous) we would be within our right to correct them and define the inference as the move from premises to a conclusion within an argument.