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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47637
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You are falling victim to the [etymological fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy): the false belief that the original meaning of a word is somehow its one true meaning.

If you look up "necromancy" in dictionaries, you find things like:

- "the act of communicating with the dead in order to discover what is going to happen in the future, or black magic (= magic used for bad purposes)" — [Cambridge](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/necromancy)

- "Necromancy is magic that some people believe brings a dead person back to this world so that you can talk to them." — [Collins](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/necromancy)

- "The art of predicting the future by supposed communication with the dead; (more generally) divination, sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment", including the example usage "In Vodoun necromancy practiced in Haiti, three lighted candles are placed at the foot of a cross at the grave selected for corpse-raising." [Oxford English Dictionary](https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/125700)

- "The supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future. 1.1 Sorcery or black magic in general." — [Oxford/Lexico](https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/necromancy)

- "conjuration of the spirits of the dead for purposes of magically revealing the future or influencing the course of events" — [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/necromancy)

More generally, the claim that a word "doesn't mean what people think it means" is nonsense, because the English language is defined by usage, not by dictionaries. The dictionaries report that people use "necromancy" to mean some kind of bad magic involving the dead, because that's how people use the word.

Original score: 7