my_hat_stinks

Plenty of words mean the opposite of themselves, so much so that there’s multiple words for it; autoantonym, contranym, or Janus words.

This morning my alarm went off so I turned it off.
I wanted to buy a new console as soon as it was out but they were all out.
Two people were left so I left.
I fought with Bob over chores, but I fought with Bob in the war.

Sort of, but but really. You’re right that historically the daylight hours set an upper limit on the amount of work that can be done per week for most types of work, but that limit is far higher than 8 hours per day over 5 days. The 40 hour work week is based on unions fighting for a 40 hour work week. If it wasn’t for the unions you’d be working all day every day except Sunday, for religious reasons.

That might change over the next few decades too, the current fight is for a 4 day work week and studies are showing promising results there.

This specific case isn’t really to do with the evolution of language, more just ineffective linguistic prescriptivism. Some guy 200 years ago decided they didn’t like how “less” had been used for the past millennium so they made up a guideline for what the preferred (like what you just said) then people decided to treat that as an actual rule. Obviously it’s still common to use “less” that way even after a couple of centuries of people trying to enforce that rule, it’s a good demonstration of how prescriptivism is a waste of time.

Strangely enough, in my experience many prescriptivists who rely on etymological arguments are fine with language changing for this one rule. Makes me think they never really did care about historic usage of a word.

Some local residents have not been onboard with the lack of car spaces at the new station.

If you need a car to reach the station it’s questionable to claim you’re local.