Linguistic pet peeve of the day

I think I'm going to do something new, wherein each day (that I remember to) I bitch about something people say or write that really bothers me. Which may start another new thing wherein each day Reuben berates me for nit-picking. Whatever. Today's linguistic pet peeve:

Disinterested.

This is not a word that's commonly used anymore--at least, not correctly. It does not, or should not, mean uninterested. Uninterested is a different word, and it means what you want to say when you want to say that someone is not interested in something. Get it? Disinterested means, primarily, "Free of bias and self-interest," according to dictionary.com. Unfortunately, there is some debate about whether the word should also mean "uninterested," which I think is ridiculous. We already have a word that means uninterested: uninterested.

Granted, we have lots of duplicate words in the language, but few are so similar to eachother as these. To have them mean the same thing would be as absurd and confusing as the whole flammable/inflammable thing*, and it deprives the language of a word that expresses a different concept entirely, namely the more correct definition of the word disinterested. You could argue that there are other words that mean something similar, e.g. impartial, but not one of these has the same connotation as disinterested, and besides, you can't marry someone impartially, but you certainly can marry someone disinterestedly (unless you're Anna Nicole Smith).

So, if you wish to say that someone is not interested in something, use uninterested. That's what uninterested is for. If you want to say that someone is indifferent to possible gains from something, use disinterested. Do not confuse the two, whether the dictionary allows you to as a secondary definition or not. There's a reason that one definition is first, after all.

*note that flammable and inflammable mean the same thing--liable to catch fire. Anyone who tells you different is wrong.