> Interpreting a statement that uses a word with many definitions by looking at what Google's autocomplete comes up with is the height of fucktarded.

But it doesn't have many definitions. It has one definition. (Okay, two: one as a noun, and one as an adjective which essentially restricts the noun it modifies to the subset of the thing that noun refers to that also meet the noun definition of "chattel".) And what is being done (for which "fucktarded" may still be a valid description) isn't choosing a definition by autocomplete, its assuming that any other use of the adjective form is a reference to the use of the adjective form that is behind the autocomplete.

Which is about equivalent to assuming that any use of "green" as an adjective is a reference to "green acres" (which is what autocomplete suggests first for "green", at least when I use it.)

OK, so what methodology do you propose for determining whether the word "chattel" is more commonly used in the context of discussing slavery, or is instead used most often when talking about things unrelated to slavery?

What does this have to do with anything? "Chattel" is a basic legal term; it's used in every state of the US.

Rayiner, who is a lawyer, presumably typed his comment with his mouth wide open and his forehead bleeding from being pounded on the desk. There isn't a lawyer in the country who doesn't know what the term means. Presumably, your comments are to a legal professional what the guys who invent their own ridiculous substitution ciphers are to professional cryptographers.

I wouldn't expect many if not most people to know that 'chattel' is a basic legal term. I would generally expect most people not to commit the logical error of assuming that just because two words are commonly used together, whenever one word is used it must be in the context of the other word.

If I say: "I had to tape my rims back together so I could see" is it relevant that Google's first completion for the word "rims" is "rims and tires?"

The google Ngram viewer:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chattel+propert...

Currency doesn't even register. Slavery wins by miles.

It doesn't matter how it is used popularly, what matters is what this particular person meant--who is a financial regulator, a field which is full of jargon and terms of art.

The course of analysis you're following is like trying to prove programmers don't like allocated memory because they refer to it as "garbage" that needs to be "collected."