Entitlement

One used to say such things as 'She has a sense of entitlement'; 'She thinks that she is entitled to walk in without an appointment'; 'Yes, she is entitled to be paid that sum'; 'All members of the club are entitled to two drinks at the bar'. It is always entitlement-for, a transitive expression:  In the first example, the object is tacit, but it is understood that the subject believes she entitled to something or other, normally if not inevitably something desirable.  And, most important for the point I'm about to make, entitlement is something granted by others--by social or legal contract, or by those unspoken agreements that exist between us. 

But now people say 'She's entitled!', an apparently intransitive phenomenon, a one-place predicate, meaning a property, not a relation (for a whole book about it, see Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, by Kate Manne). What they mean, on the older way of speaking, is 'She has a sense of entitlement', or 'She assumes she is entitled (to something)'.  In fact it is possible to be entitled in the new sense without actually being entitled the old sense.  To say one is entitled in the new sense is primarily a remark about one's own state of mind.  Entitlement in the old sense, by contrast, was an achievement, a 'title' one had to earn, or be granted as a matter of one's social or legal standing.  Not only is one's state of mind not sufficient for entitlement in the old sense, no particular state of mind is necessary: one can perfectly well be entitled to something, in the old sense, without being aware of it, or indeed while believing that one is not entitled to it.  Now, contrariwise, to say 'She's entitled' is more often than not taken to mean, precisely, that she lacks the standing she thinks she has, that, in the old sense of the word, she is not entitled.  

Is any confusion generated by the potential ambiguity between the two senses?  I said above that, unlike the old sense, to say one is entitled in the new sense is primarily a remark about one's own state of mind.  Is it merely such a remark?  A bit of field work perhaps is necessary; ask subjects whether it is possible for one to be mistaken in thinking one is entitled.  I suspect results would not be uniform, a sign that echoes of the old sense are still present.