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Think of how you use the words ‘vulgar, villa, pagan, let’ for example and how they once had a quite different sense. Yet you would make an exception for “co”? For what reason and by what logic?

Those are all words I use in the archaic sense. "Prevent" too!
(Yeah, sometimes people look at me funny....)

You just nailed one of my habits, I'm afraid. I don't even know the modern sense of "villa". "Farmhouse"?

You may have noticed that I slip into the Coverdale Psalter and the KJV -- though I'm beginning to shake that.

My wife says it's because I when I was learning to speak I was learning two languages at once, AND my mother spoke English Enlgish while my father spoke Amurrican.

Anyway, when I hear or use an obviously Latinate word, my mind usually goes to the Latin meaning. So when I hear "co-" even in an English word, I think of "with", not "equal with". Of course, I guess my first encounter with the prefix was "co-pilot" whom i always thought to be subordinate to the pilot. They're not BOTH co-pilots, after all.
I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying I'm me.

BUT ....

I just got done saying that my Church does that too. Too darn much IMHO.

Having a jargon in usage within a group is common enough but it cannot be expected that others accept the usages peculiar to that group without explanation.

I think that's right. We do owe an explanation. I do find myself in RCIA (inquirer's classes) reminding the other teachers that a lot of poeple don't talk Catholic, and, when I am talking, referring often to 'Catholic lingo.'

But after I have "testified" to its meaning in the jargon, THEN I think it's the burden of the other side to show I mean something else. How about that?

It IS our fault that we're misunderstood before the explanation, but when people insist, AFTER the explanation that we mean Mary is equal to Jesus when we obviously don't mean anything of the kind, that's not reasonable.

Come to think of it, what would your side say about "co-pilot"?

“But after I have “testified” to its meaning in the jargon, THEN I think it's the burden of the other side to show I mean something else. How about that?

I agree that it isn't reasonable to attribute meanings contrary to those already stated so let's see how this would work:

MD says I'm a vulgar pagan but he means I'm a common uneducated or unenlightened person. So I'll explain to MD that when I say he's an insane cur he shouldn't take the common meaning of my words but rather what I've said they mean and so should others, it's jargon.

It's not reasonable because it requires us to say a person doesn't mean what he has said he means. But neither is it reasonable for anyone to expect readers or hearers to be familiar with everyone’s meaning or solicit it when they use common English words with widely accepted meanings.

With or without explanations your use of an English word doesn’t change the meaning of that word. Nor does attempting to use an archaic sense.

If you say I'm a vulgar pagan I have every reason to take what it means in the language I speak no matter how many appeals to jargon are made. I...I don't speak your jargon and I feel it unreasonable to ask me to start using it by accepting its vocabulary.

Every group has a jargon to some degree but jargon is suitable for use only within that group. Patent means one thing within the medical profession and commonly another without for example.

Ahhh...co-pilot is still a pilot and must be able to perform all the flight operations of the pilot. And he may in fact assist in flying the plane when necessary. Otherwise he's just a passenger in the right seat.