Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
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.
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But the fundamental point, as ApK rightly says (and it is a very good point), is that simply because a word has a "technical" meaning in one field, that doesn't prevent its general use in everyday speech. For example, in the field of cosmology, the adjectives "hot" and "cold" are used to refer to particles moving respectively close to (or at) the speed of light, and slowly relatively to the speed of light. That doesn't mean that even cosmologists object to using the words "hot" and "cold" in their everyday usages.