Efforts like the "IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology", where from an era that we learned what didn't work, which linguistics had learned

Efforts like the "IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology", where from an era that we learned what didn't work, which linguistics had learned way before CS. The IEEE didn't go 'wishy-washy' they accepted that at that scope, 'Descriptive' was the appropriate approach and 'Prescriptive' was inappropriate for a broad context. Same thing happen with most English dictionaries. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/descriptive-vs-prescriptive-defining-lexicography https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/descriptive-vs-presc... “Ubiquitous Language” concepts from DDD is probably the best example here. Domain specific language is always polysemous to a wider scope. So DDD typically defaults to allowing domain experts (think accountants, not accounting software developers) to object to a rigorous “Ubiquitous Language” for interfacing with each other. This is important because when domain experts object to a formal definition as proposed, they are possibly concerned about nuances in that language that are important. Obviously they may just be pedantic, but the default assumption is that they are trying to convey something important about the domain of discourse. The Prescriptive model of enterprise architecture utterly failed to live up to it's promise, in part because word sense ambiguity is a pervasive characteristic of natural language even at the scope of an enterprise.