“A 35-year-old media executive on a first date plunged to her death Thursday after the railing on her 17th-floor New York City balcony gave way, police said.”
The debasement of education in the use of the English language, to the detriment of accurate communication, continues to rise.
Note what Merriam Webster has ro say about “plunge”:
at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plunge
It usually implies some form of willful act. In as much as the writers at AP cannot claim to know any motive the victim had for falling, the only PROPER word in the sentence I quoted, in place of “plunged” would have been “fell”.
But, their use of “plunged” goes together with their otherwise perjorative reporting of the tragedy, so maybe their use of “plunged” in its perjorative sense was intentional as well.
The story was going for human interest, but either definition 2A or 3 in the MR pertained in this case.