I've got a nice reproducible case here--memory-intensive command-line utility dealing with image data, run it once it takes 1.5 minutes, run it a second time, it takes 2.5 minutes. No shared memory or semaphores or anything exotic, just malloc, use memory, free memory, exit.

I concurr that Yosemite isn't a very stable upgrade.
But are you sure your issue is related to virtual memory and not to the CPU clocking itself down because of heat.

What exactly is a "residual inactive memory allocation"??? Oh, that's right, there is no such thing--it's just a phrase you pulled out of your ass to shift blame for an OS bug which you do not understand onto apps. It's a UNIX variant, app quits, allocated memory is reclaimed.

Well Mac OS X doesn't kill applications when you press the "close" button, it only kills/detaches/hides/whatever the window
So I think what he thinks is residual inactive memory is probably used memory from any "closed" application.
That's kinda sad tough to keep rebooting to alleviate low memory issues because you can't figure out to properly exit a mac application.

I mean shit, if you compare modern values to the Victorian era, we're all a bunch of uneducated rabble. All of us. For example, anybody who couldn't speak Latin fluently was an uneducated nobody (even though Latin was a long dead language by this era.)

You're talking about the age where education/science was a hobby for the highly privileged (aristocracy).
These people had servants, fortunes and real estate as support. And knowing latin isn't any different as knowing any other language.
Frankly, you have a very romantic view of the Victorian era.

Besides, there's been a somewhat long-standing theory that it's best to keep the vocabulary to a minimum. Using really complicated and/or obscure words doesn't benefit anybody, ever. At best, people who you need to get your message across to haven't heard the word before and misunderstand you (there are somewhere north of a million words in the English language; nobody anywhere knows all of them) and at worst you sound like a snooty asshole. It cannot benefit you in any way to constantly use them, but it can harm you and those around you. That's a fact.

I get what you are saying. KISS right.
The problem is sometimes you do have to use these "difficult" words since they describe more exactly what you want to mean.
And a bunch of clarifying sub-sentences doesn't make your communication more legible anyway.