It might make more sense if you think of "scripting language" as being a statement of intent than a technical classification. I have seen it used as a perjorati

It might make more sense if you think of "scripting language" as being a statement of intent than a technical classification. I have seen it used as a perjorative, which I agree is stupid. More generally, performance, ease of programming, correctness, etc are goals, whereas typing systems and compilation strategies are techniques that can be used to reach those goals. "Axes" is probably overthinking it, as none of these criteria or properties are linear, but terms for all of them can be worthwhile if used to answer the right questions. Since goals have a strong influence on technical properties, it's not completely crazy to summarize a language's technical features in terms of its goals. "Scripting language" makes sense as a description for languages that emphasize ease of programming (with overtones of interacting with a larger system) over other features. You also have a clue about a language called "high performance": probably not interpreted or dynamically typed (although exceptions include kdb, arguably Java and Julia). Finally, not every term needs a rigorous definition in terms of more primitive terms. Sometimes you just need a name for a category that everyone kind of knows is there. This is probably the more realistic origin of the term, though I do think the underlying reason for that category existing is mostly the goal-driven one described in my previous paragraph. Note: In the bit you quoted, I certainly didn't mean to say that "user friendly" was necessarily opposed to all those other goal properties. I was just trying to give examples of other things you might want to prioritize in a design.