I don't really have much to say in line of words meaning different things "TO" different people. I believe words have objective meaning. Never mind all that for a moment; it can take us down a very long (and needless) path. Let us consider two different words altogether: "sex" vs "coitus." They have different meanings, but more important to my point, they are in fact different words. The definitions are different. However, even when comparing words that share the very same letters in the very same order, they too have different meanings.
My complaint is that people will respect the distinction when the letters are different but more resistant when the letters are the same. It's an unfortunate by-product of human nature when there's ambiguity.
Words have meaning, objectively. Yes, people can stipulate meaning, and that's fine, but most people can have a conversation without using words in an alternative manner--alternative to lexical usage. If I tell you that I have ten cats and no dogs, I expect that you know exactly what I mean. If I told you that the bank charged me a fee for a bounced check, I don't think I have to worry that you think I just told you that land near a river charged me a fee for a dribbling mark. Many (many many many) words have multiple meanings, and it's often incredibly easy for us to determine what is being expressed.
If I say the bank charged me a fee for a bounced check, would you deliberately (and unjokingly) play word games and say that I am mistaken because a river bank cannot charge a fee? Of course not.
However, people do just that and with seriousness when they think context is unimportant. They do that when using identical words but not when the words are not like "sex" and "coitus" from earlier. Here's an example: there is a definition of sex that strictly refers to intercourse. If I use that specific definition of that word yet say I didn't have sex yet it's also true oral sex was involved, what will people say when I deny having had sex even though I had oral sex? See how this can go awry? They fail to appreciate that words have multiple meanings in such instances. Because they see other definitions that apply, they feel like they can find an inaccuracy in what I say, yet in circumstances where the meaning is conveyed with a completely different word, there's no problem.
Even your 50 feet airborne question isn't well defined....is it a human doing the jumping? Were they wearing an exoskeleton? Or were we talking about a bird which can easily jump way more than 50 feet into the air? Or if you were referring to a human, did you consider jumping from a height of 50 feet...downward?
What? Okay!
Unaided by technology, it's impossible to use your normal legs that you were born with to jump upwards fifty feet in the air from a flat surface in your front yard. I will now make clear that by "impossible," I mean physically impossible. Essentially, I'm saying that the act is a physical impossibility.
So, is it possible? People will still chime in and say yes because of the fact it's still a logical possibility. The fact that the word is ambiguous seems to in their mind give them the right to think I'm wrong, but (but!), they don't do that merely because there's other definitions but because it's the very same word with other definitions.
Hope that clears it up some.
