[Threshold]

This whole situation is an example of how in a small, insular group, you can make up vague terms and it doesn't matter since everyone knows what you mean. That's fine. But when you go out into the Big Bad World, it is foolish to expect and demand that everyone adhere to the little personal definitions you have made for an otherwise generic term.

I have a very apt analogy. In my family, we have two cars. They are both green. But if my wife says "which car are we taking?" and I say "the green car", she knows I mean the smaller green car (better gas mileage but less room). Now, that's fine in our family. When someone says "get in the green car, we're going", everyone else knows which car to get into. I believe the reason this term evolved is because the little green car is our secondary car, and during its lifespan we have had 3 different primary cars. So the colors of the primary car has changed, and only recently became green. But the secondary car has always been green... thus, it is always "the green car."

But it would be absolute foolishness and arrogance for us to expect the rest of the whole wide world to understand and accept that "the green car" means "the smaller of two green cars." We chose to use a very vague and generic term, and it works for us. But expecting everyone else to share in this definition is totally inappropriate and illogical. It doesn't matter how long we have been calling the smaller car "the green car" or how well this term works for us.

Furthermore, "the green car" is not a perfect term at all. It is, in fact, a pretty poor term. But it works for us, we use it, and there's nothing wrong with that. It would only start to be wrong if we demanded that everyone else use the term in the same manner.