Now Or In A While?

Apparently my usage of the word presently in my previous post has caused some concern. Granted, it was a small amount of concern, voiced by one, but concern nonetheless. When I look up presently in my Oxford Dictionary Of Current English the first definition it gives is: soon; after a short time. The second definition is: esp. US & Scot. at the present time; now. Thinking I should give our American friends a chance to state their own case, I looked the word up in Encarta. Their first definition is: soon, not at this exact moment but in a short while. Followed by: at present time, now, or during the current period, especially if not at some other time. This second definition is followed by the tag: some people object to this usage. Well, here is me saying that I am one of those people. But honestly, that is based on little more than the fact that I am an erudite grammar snob. Wanting to dig a little deeper, I looked up the word in my Oxford Concise Dictionary Of English Etymology. Their first definition is a now obsolete one: so as to be present. The second, dating back to the 15th century is: now, followed by their third definition, from the 16th century: soon. That means that back in 1537 there may have been a young scholarly gent deriding this modern usage of presently to mean soon, when clearly to him it should be used as now. Prejudices aside, there are two ways to look at this. The right way, of course, is that language is fluid and ever changing, which is what makes it an interesting, exciting thing. The other view, which is not wrong, is that there are rules to the language which make it useful as a system of communication and that system functions best when those rules are followed. So, the linguist in me accepts that language always has and always will change, and that grammar is a way to codify that language at any given time, but, damn it all, the staunch grammarian in me doesn't have to like it.