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"Loosely or informal" solely means that it's associated with an informal register, specially in contrast with #1. Any claim past is assumption.
"Wrong" is relative. Which is the standard/reference that you're using for contrast? Your own usage?
And odds are that #2 is the original meaning. It isn't like "people suddenly started to refer to Bos taurus regardless of sex", it's more like "people have been using it with this meaning for thousands of years". #1 (the more common meaning) is likely the result of semantic narrowing, and #5 (the one that you're defending as "correct") is probably fairly recent. None of those meanings should be seen as "incorrect", but picking on a meaning that backtracks all the way into Proto-Indo-European is extremely obtuse. (And no, the situation is nothing like the one for "literally".)