Israeli Linguist A Bit Too Full Of Herself

An Israeli linguist seems to think she has turned the linguistic world upside down with her new meaning for the word "most."  A UPN article states

Professor Mira Ariel of Tel Aviv University says her research "is quite shocking for the linguistics world" and proves some of her fellow linguists are wrong in their definition of the word "most."

She claims that we linguists believe that

"most" generally means 51 percent to 99 percent of a group of people or objects.

but that in a survey she and her colleagues did, a number of persons

understood "most" to mean about 80 percent to 95 percent of a group and not the much larger range of 51 percent to 99 percent.

One very serious problem with her claims is that no self-respecting linguist would ever say that "most" means 51 percent to 99 percent of a group or means '80 percent to 95 percent of a group.'  This is just now how we use the word "mean."

Professor Ariel seems not to understand the distinction between "meaning" and "use".  It very well may be that people use "most" in a proposition like "Most Ps are Q" in circumstances in which 80-95% of the relevant Ps have the property Q.  But that is not what it means.  That is how we use it.  I am not sure how to characterize what it means but I am sure that that is not what it means.

If I say, that most Ps are Q and it turns out that 97% of the Ps are Q is what I said false?  Surely not. And if it turns out that 75% of the Ps are Q, is what I said false"?  Again, surely not.  This may not be how people generally use "most" but the meaning of "most," whatever it is, is consistent with these two claims being true and so long as that is true, then we can be sure that Professor Ariel is wrong about what "most" means.