[stoneeZef]

All I can really say to that at the moment is that my dictionary of ancient Japanese still lists the kanji in question for the verb samurabu, from which the term is derived.

It's entirely possible that the TERM samurai wasn't in general use for a while; in fact I know that it absolutely wasn't around before the end of the Heian era, meaning a fair number of the famous stories about samurai had to do with people who would have no clue what the term meant.

But I was discussing the use of the term itself, and the term is expressed with THAT kanji. Like I said before, you can say plenty of other things with 士, things that refer to people of that social class and that refer to warriors, but you can't use it to write samurai. It's just the wrong kanji. And it's not a situation like sakana (fish) being written with 魚, which is technically the wrong kanji - samurai has a clear etymology and a clear kanji for that etymology, and that kanji is well-known and well-accepted in present day Japan.