***I wouldn't go so far as to say you're being dishonest, but you're really grasping to maintain that the term "baptizo" or "baptismos" means anything but immersion.***
Thirty five years after the death of John the apostle they were using the word baptize to mean immerse, sprinkle and pour. I have merely pointed out that it was also used in these verses 95 years earlier.
***1. Do you really believe that the Pharisees, who were so paranoid about being unclean, would actually neglect to wash the inside of their cups and bowls in any fashion?***
This was not washing to remove old food. This was ceremonial cleansing to make them "legal" for meal use.
As the verse said, they made the outside "clean" but ignored the inside.
The only way to do that would be to either sprinkling or a minor "dip" in a larger bowl of water just to let the outside of the pot touch the water, but not immerse it fully.
Much like a dove was "dipped" into the blood of another dove, or a finger "dipped" into the palm of the hand just to get a few drops of blood or oil on it for sprinkling purposes. Christ is using this as an example of the lives of the Pharasees. clean on the outside, rotten on the inside.
**3. It may be nitpicking, but "baptizo" or "baptismos" aren't even used in these verses.***
They don't have to be. But they WERE used in the other verses about ritual cleansing. And both of these deal with ritual cleansing before meal time.
***They weren't what we would call "couches" today.***
They ate in the Greek fashion, reclining on their side on a couch, with a low table in front of them.
Just because a word is used, doesn't mean it is used properly in accord with its meaning. And when it is used improperly, that improper useage does not change its objective meaning.
Just 10 years after the death of Christ, heretics were using the word "Christian" to describe their heresies. Did that make their heresies "Christian"?
Just because people call themselves "Christian" doesn't mean they are, and just because people call sprinkling "baptism", doesn't mean it is.
If as you say, the word has evolved, why are the two words: "baptize" and "sprinkle" defined differently in the dictionary. Why have the definitions not evolved?
The only place sprinkling means baptism is in the minds of those who want it to and who use the word improperly.