(Disclaimer: I'm an amateur Chinese fan for one year.)
I understand and respect the difference between the two definitions of etymology given. I also agree that tracking the actual changes in character composition and contemporary usage, as etymology, is the better definition. But having no academic experience with Chinese yet, and relying only on the Internet and natives to explain "the meaning behind the symbols", I find that this looser definition, which could perhaps also be called pictographic decomposition, is an adventure into the web of meaning. This is perhaps not the exact history of a word or a character, but perhaps like the 90s JPEGs, you get a certain resolution by knowing the literal meaning of a single character or word's components, and then later on, track the full extent of Chinese etymology.
I understand and respect the difference between the two definitions of etymology given. I also agree that tracking the actual changes in character composition and contemporary usage, as etymology, is the better definition. But having no academic experience with Chinese yet, and relying only on the Internet and natives to explain "the meaning behind the symbols", I find that this looser definition, which could perhaps also be called pictographic decomposition, is an adventure into the web of meaning. This is perhaps not the exact history of a word or a character, but perhaps like the 90s JPEGs, you get a certain resolution by knowing the literal meaning of a single character or word's components, and then later on, track the full extent of Chinese etymology.