I think this is a problem in a lot of areas where you invent new concepts for which we don’t have words yet. Happens a lot in tech and also in science. If you

I think this is a problem in a lot of areas where you invent new concepts for which we don’t have words yet. Happens a lot in tech and also in science. If you use a metaphor that people can relate to there is a high chance they will latch on to the metaphor and push it into areas where it doesn’t work anymore. I saw that a lot when “cloud computing” came up. I once described one of our systems as “basically a flash drive” which made sense in the context of the FDA regulation we were discussing but a few months later a director was outraged “but you said it’s a flash drive” in a totally different context where the metaphor didn’t make sense. Also saw it around COVID vaccines. I talked to several people who claimed calling it “vaccine” is fraudulent because in their minds a vaccine protects you 100% from the disease and if it only avoids hospitalization or severe cases it’s not a vaccine.