"Back in 'the eye of the storm' "

That's what I thought too fevertree I have been wrong before though when I had the wrong meaning in my head for something like this.

The eye of the storm is calm. But dangerous. So I am unsure about using it in this context

However, I'm not particularly intelligent so who knows

I've always thought that "in the eye of the storm" means smack bang in the midst of chaos, and I'm fairly well educated and definitely well read

Grandma 70 perhaps unintentionally, your comment about the linguistically aware being irritated sounds really pompous. ( I hope I've used the word "pompous" correctly )

As we're constantly being told that dictionary definitions reflect usage, and that it's not up to dictionary compilers to impose their idea of 'correct' meaning, I think we're fighting a losing battle. It's very annoying but there you go..

I don't understand how one is meant to extract meaning from a communication if the communicator is using a completely different meaning of a word from the meaning used by the communicatee...

The definition of "in the eye of the storm" in Collins Dictionary is:

"deeply involved in a difficult or controversial situation which affects or interests a lot of people", so I think Stevens used it appropriately.

Sometimes the misuse of words is the result of ignorance of the etymology. That is probably the case with ‘prodigal’ - though I’m not aware of the usage you mention. Teach all children Latin, and a bit about Greek too. Some hope.

People will argue that usage changes over time, which is true, but that doesn’t stop the linguistically aware from being irritated.

The misuse of prodigal both annoys and amuses me. Indeed, that is often the way with quite a lot of words. Having a dictionary won't help unless you actually use it to check your use or misuse of a word. I have several shelves of dictionaries – not all of them English language – in my home office and look words up pretty much every day. Just in passing, one of the cleverest men and of the stupidest men I ever met went to Balliol.