Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
OK. I understand what you are saying now. I still disagree, but I understand.
Who says that those words are should only refer to proper location rather than present location? Just because biologists USE them that way, doesn't mean it's the only way they are supposed to be used. They took an adjective and used it as part of a proper name of a kind of climate or layer.
There is an animal called a Blue Whale. That doesn't make it sloppy call other things blue.
And why no quibble with the resting place? Not all resting places are subterranean. It could have had an arboreal resting place in a tree.
Now, if the author had referred to the lawn, with it's fleeting seasonal snowcover, as being in an subnivean climate, then I might agree that he misused the term "subnivean climate."
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Let me give a different example. Some worms are subterranean, some aren't. They are all worms. The difference is that the first kind are usually found in the ground, and the others aren't. If the term becomes the same as "underground", then you lose the information about whether the worms belong there or not. It would also mean that you could say that a worm pulled out of the ground is not subterranean, which could be confusing (which definition do they mean?). That is why I think it's advantageous to keep the definitions precise.
As to re-purposing the adjectives from general to specific, I don't know that it was done that way. Maybe it was the other way around.