-> The validity of a definition can be established ONLY by an appeal to 
-> authority. 
  
No. Often it just boils down to common usage. The word "party" was 
purely a noun when I was a kid. Then people started using it as a verb, 
and this is now accepted usage. The same sort of thing seems to be 
happening to the word "text", in the context of sending cellphone text 
messages. 
  
General usage described Pluto as a planet for decades, but now many 
people prefer to call it a KBO. If this shift becomes the norm, then 
Pluto *will* be a KBO rather than a planet. It will be the same object, 
and there may have been no change in formal definitions, but its 
accepted status will have changed. 
  
                                dow 
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