Yeah, "loosely defined" is probably an understatement - key rule if you are ever interviewed and want some level of control is to ensure you and the journalist

Yeah, "loosely defined" is probably an understatement - key rule if you are ever interviewed and want some level of control is to ensure you and the journalist know the definition not just the phrase. Another one that I discovered in my brief time in journalism was that the medical reports (stable, critical etc) you hear most often have no medical basis - they're used by the media, and many healthcare professionals (at least, in Aus 10 years ago) didn't much like them because of their vagueness. If you want my working definition of those, you basically have two scales: condition (fine, minor, serious, critical, dead) and change (improving, stable, deteriorating). Combine the two and you have an excellent soundbite - "The driver is in a critical but stable condition".