Has the meaning of "White Knighting" changed? It seemed to once mean "insincerely defending someone for romantic favors" but now seems to mean "defending anybody."

The definition I'd always heard was "Defending someone with the ulterior motive of making them like you, usually for romantic affection."

But nowadays, I often see the term thrown around for just speaking up for other people generally. It might not even be toward a specific person. Example:

Person A: Man, [x-group] is a bunch of [insult]. Person B: I disagree. There's plenty of good people in that group, and I don't think we should the good in with the bad. Person A: Ugh, you're being such a white knight.

In the above scenario, Person B certainly isn't trying to romantically woo an entire demographic of people, so the original definition of white-knighting obviously wouldn't apply here.

So, has the general meaning changed? Or is the original definition still the more common one that people think of when they hear the term? I don't know if it's just devolved into meaning "defending other people on the internet in any capacity whatsoever" or not, but I am interested in hearing peoples' thoughts on the matter.

/r/AskReddit Thread