Thank you for yet another interesting and though-provoking reply and I really hope you would not find my lengthy reply too tiresome or repetitive.

> If everything is belief, then there is no truth.

That doesn't follow at all from my positions and could only be deduced if you want to substitute the way you define the word into the context of what I'm saying. This is fallacious because you are in this way substituting the meaning of what I'm saying altogether. The broader usage I favor doesn't postulate that belief has to always be unsubstantiated. I use it to mean any idea that one is convinced of regardless of correctness, reasoning or substantiation. When I say I believe something I mean that I'm convinced of its truthfulness regardless of how good a reason I have to hold that belief.

So one's beliefs and the truth about reality are two (hopefully :P) partially overlapping circles on a Venn diagram and the overlapping area is what you call knowledge in your model.

I just find this usage more useful and I've actually adopted it because I have seen many people use it that way and I found it descriptive and understandable. But I do understand the *without proof or reason* part that you are implying in the word and this is indeed a common usage too. I prefer using faith for that which gives me the ability to work with two different concepts. On one hand belief refers to all internal claims and faith is what you use to justify the ones that you don't have better justification for.

Please note that I'm not even advocating for my usage over yours here, I'm just pointing out what I mean by the word to avoid confusion and I'm arguing that I'm warranted to stick to the usage I find utility in. I guess I could go with position instead of belief here to eradicate the ambiguity and then I think you would not have trouble understanding what I mean, right?

Still, I reject the idea that etymology is the most important factor when determining the meaning of a word. It's a factor that could be considered but current usage is much more important. There are boatloads of words that have moved away from their original etymological meanings and using them in their "original" sense would actually be a hindrance to communication and a source of misunderstanding, ambiguity and irrelevance.

> [...] how language is created to reflect reality [...]

We can try to understand how language was created in the hope or belief that it reflects reality, but we should not assume that it reflects reality correctly. When we discover new things, we need to create new concepts and find words to express them. We could create new words, but more often than not, we add a new usage in the new context of old words. Going back and trying to bound those new usages to old contexts does not lead to ideas that reflect reality. 

You can look at the word *nice* which comes from the Latin *nescire* which means *to be ignorant of*. But if you try to use nice as a synonym for ignorant today, very few people would catch the negative connotation. If you try to convince the world that we should go back to the etymologically substantiated usage of the word, you would fail, because in practice usage is simply more important that etymology.

> But truth and belief not being understood and not used properly to distinguish what we talk about, is a reason for much confusion when trying to get to truth.

Whenever topics like this one are discussed, there is a always a chance for misunderstanding. That's why it's important for the two communicating parties to agree on the meanings of the terms they are using or at least to have a way to communicate the differences in their usages. It's not a burden that falls solely on one of the parties even if one of the parties is for instance an expert linguist. As words are not magic or fixed, one party cannot have a monopoly on dictating what is or isn't a correct usage of a word, because such a thing does not exist as an absolute. Languages are fluid and so are individual words, which often have more than one accepted meaning and might have very different meanings in specialized fields and/or specific circles, areas and so on. My opinion is that you cannot properly talk about language without taking that fluidity and inherent ambiguity into account.

Additionally, I think concepts should give color to words, not the other way around, so I don't think our inquiry into truth should start from words and trying to determine their supposedly correct meaning.

I don't believe that you can make a claim that I'm not using the word belief properly when I use it the way I do. We need to find a way to understand each other, but there isn't a less proper usage and a more proper usage here.

>  I've done work to try to explain the difference hehe. It's important. :)

That's a difference and a distinction that you are warranted to make and I agree it's important but that applies to the particular usages of a term you subscribe to or are examining in your thinking. It is not something that can invalidate other usages especially in cases where those usages are not uncommon and the conclusions you have come to do not necessarily apply to other usages as they are in practice differing concepts. The distinctions you make apply to the usages you have based the distinction on.

A prescriptivist approach to language is in my opinion simply unfeasible as you could not in any way force me to abandon a usage I see as common, useful and descriptive enough to stick to.