Semantic drift does occur, and without drawing in good lexicographic analysis as an objective measure of that change, you can't be sure what a word meant at any given stage of it's progression through the various host languages.
Here we would have to disagree inasmuch as "priest" today describes the same office called presbuteros in the Bible.
As you suggest, those in English cultures influenced by centuries of Protestant differentiation between "priest" and "elder" will be truly unable to hear "priest" without inferring strong sacerdotal overtones.
But as a Catholic I recognize "priest" as the same office as presbuteros. Similarly, as a Catholic I would view the desire to impose "elder" as the proper translation of presbuteros as an dishonest attempt to deny the continuation of the office of presbuteros in today's Catholic priest. For me "elder" is just as an historically and semantically overloaded term as "priest" is for you.
With all this being said I hope you can understand the Catholic position and that we can agree that the Catholic use of the term "priest", however inaccurate you think it may be, is not a false attempt to impose the concept of hiereus on the office of presbuteros but is drawn from our understanding of the Catholic priesthood as a continuation of the biblical presbuteros.
I appreciate your civility in this discussion, but while i concur that the English word "priest" as coming from preost was a valid if it only was used for presbuteros, distinctive of hiereus, yet since priest is the word which came to used for the Jewish hiereus, then it is wrong to use it for NT presbuteros, as it ignores the distinction made in the Greek by never titling "presbuteros" "hiereus."
I would view the desire to impose "elder" as the proper translation of presbuteros as an dishonest attempt to deny the continuation of the office of presbuteros in today's Catholic priest.
But presbuteros actually means senior/elder, and it is God which made the distinction in terms. Jewish elders (zâqên, from old) as a body existed before the Levitical priesthood, most likely as heads of household or clans, and while Levitical priests (kôhên) can also be elders, simply being an elder did not make one a Levitical priest, and hiereus (as archiereus=chief priests) is used in distinction to elders in such places as Lk. 22:66; Acts 22:5.
The fact that the Holy Spirt never used the hiereus for presbuteros means that He is the one denying the continuation of the office of presbuteros as meaning hiereus, as a distinctive sacerdotal class of clergy, and presbuteros are never shown or described as engaging in a unique sacrificial function, or even offering the Eucharist as their primary function.
In fact, they are never shown doing so or manifestly instructed to do so in any of the duties listed that are interpretive of the gospels, but breaking break is described as something all are to do, showing/declaring the Lord's death by sharing food with each other in that communal meal, recognizing each other as members of the body of Christ which the Lord purchased with His own sinless shed blood.
As shown in this post on 1Cor. 11:19-34, the only manifest description of the Lord's supper in the life of the church.