The way we colloquially use words often contradicts their more precise definitions because one often inherits from the other in messy and unpredictable ways. Fo

The way we colloquially use words often contradicts their more precise definitions because one often inherits from the other in messy and unpredictable ways. For example, in botany the "fruit" of a plant is a ripened ovary containing the seeds but in everyday culinary usage, a "fruit" is generally something that has more sugar relative to nutritional value than a vegetable, which puts a lot of tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers in a position very vulnerable to faux-edgy semantic arguments. In this case most people use the word "supernatural" as some vague stand in for ideas found outside of the scientific consensus [1]. Meanwhile, scientists and philosophers use it as a precise category that lets them wash their hands of the topic completely. [1] Or whatever the speaker believes the consensus to be, which is its own messy topic