Overloaded terms

deserves

terms

familiar,

they

of

using

chop

Well, "sci.electronics.design" is the obvious one. Otherwise "Organic" and "Natural" pop to mind. Art

What needs spring cleaning is your idea of how language works. Our understa nding of what most words mean is highly context-dependent.

Most professions have a couple of thousand words that they use idiosyncrati cally.

I got my nose rubbed in this back when I was learning Science Russian from a linguist, but it's obvious enough. When talking as a chemist I use the wo rds "substitute" and "substituent" to mean something rather different from what I mean when I'm using them in regular English. Physicists have a simil arly idiosyncratic take on the difference between speed (in any direction) and velocity (in a specific direction).

The "Liberal" word comes to mind. The "Terrorist" word, too.

VLV

"Charge"

Cash.

"state", when I have my control-engineering hat on and I'm trying to talk to a software engineer about implementing a control algorithm.

"stability", which means something very specific in the context of linear dynamic systems, becomes fuzzy when you're talking about nonlinear dynamic systems, and changes meaning altogether when you're discussing the behavior of a ball in a bowl on a boat.

Teddy Roosevelt, as in Arsenic and Old Lace ?>:-} ...Jim Thompson

Leave my credit card out of this!!!

Democracy?

"3G" vs. "4G" ??

"Solutions" (newspeak for "products")

"Issue" (newspeak for "bug," "defect," and/or "problem.")

Il 11/05/2013 14:17, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com ha scritto:

What's the correct use of the term issue?

Marco

"Marco Trapanese = TROLL " snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com hascritto:

You really are one completely illiterate, wog moron.

F*ck off.

Good luck finding a programmer who has any meaningful idea of "state", other than the one he lives in.

It's heavily overloaded with several other meanings, e.g. bonds "issue," your children are the "issue" of your loins, and "Time magazine, January issue."

In this abused content, "issue" is properly a point of discussion, contention, or something to be discussed. e.g. "There's an issue concerning which is better, A or B."

When Internutz Exploder auto-loads yet another virus or Windows throws a BSOD that's not an "issue," it's a crime.

Those are two good candidates--'state' especially is analogous to 'dichroic', which means (a) any inhomogeneous material that manages to be wavelength-selective, (b) anything polarization-based, e.g. the colours you get from putting Saran Wrap between crossed polarizers; (c) polarization selective, e.g. Polaroid film, (d) based on thin films, e.g. an interference filter, or (e) something depending on the dispersion of linear or circular birefringence. The meanings obviously shade into one another, so that any of them is defensible, but different terms would be better because the total range is so very broad.

(With all peace to Bill and his no doubt involuntary didactifussitude, there are lots of these terms that frustrate communication rather than promoting it, which is the point of the thread. Jargon is often ugly, so it should at least be clear.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Those are excellent examples too, Phil. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

How does Microsoft avoid legal liability for their horrendously crappy software?

I'm late to the game, but I'll nominate saturation. Too much laser light and I saturate an atomic transition, but I might not see it if the gain on the Photodiode is too high and it saturates, there may even be some transistors saturating in my PD opamp..

I haven't touched magnetics yet..

George H.