> Scarlet Johansson is threatening legal action against OpenAI for this
Scarlet Johansson cannot prosecute anyone. She can sue them, in civil court, for civil damages. Prosecution is done in connection with crimes. Nobody is alleging any crimes here.
Where did you get this? I'm seeing "to officially accuse someone of committing a crime" [1]. Criminality is esssential to the term. (EDIT: Found it. Cambridge Academic Content dictionary. It seems to be a simplified text [2]. I'm surprised they summarised the legal definition that way versus going for the colloquial one.)
You have to go back to the 18th century to find the term used to refer to initiating any legal action [3][4].
> is looking/sounding like somebody else (even if its famous) prosecutable or not?
No. And if a lawmaker claimed they would like it to be, and then claimed they meant civilly litigible, they’d be labelled dishonest. (Even if it was an honest mistake.)
The third definition listed on your Merriam-Webster link seems to be what's applicable here, and very clearly describes the term as applicable to any legal action.
This is consistent with my understanding of the term as a native English speaker, having experienced the term "prosecute" being used in reference to both criminal and civil cases in all forms of discourse, verbal and written, formal and informal, for decades, and only first encountering the claim that it shouldn't be used for civil cases here in this thread, today.
> very clearly describes the term as applicable to any legal action…only first encountering the claim that it shouldn't be used for civil cases here in this thread, today
Partly why I used that citation. It’s one of the few (adult) dictionaries that acknowledges as much.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Webster 3b usage is incorrect—it’s in some dictionaries and was historically unambiguously correct. But it’s non-standard to a high degree, to the extent that Black’s Law Dictionary only contains the criminal variant. (I’ll leave it open whether publicly referring to someone who has only been sued as someone who has been prosecuted, when intended as an attack, qualifies as defamation.)
More to the point of clear communication, I’d put it in a similar category as claiming one’s usage of terrific or silly was intended in its historic sense [1]. (Though I’ll admit my use of “nice” falls in that category.)
All that said, I’m very willing to entertain there being a dialect, probably in America, where the historic use is still common.
I'd regard what you're calling "historical" as being the actual standard usage in conventional speech -- again, I've never encountered the notion that "prosecute" doesn't apply to civil litigation until today, and I've been speaking English for decades, and have had many discussions involving legal cases, conversed with lawyers, signed contracts, etc. throughout my life.
The fact that you're referring to an intra-disciplinary dictionary to make the opposite argument implies that the narrower definition is jargon, and not an accurate representation of the common meaning of the term.
Why would that make it more common in the UK? Being able to bring a private prosecution strengthens the distinction, a regular citizen can both sue someone for a civil offense and prosecute someone for a criminal offense. It makes it more clearly nonsense to refer to suing someone for slandering you as "prosecuting" them because you can bring prosecutions and that is not one!
Are you not aware of this?