I read Maaret's post about why quibbling over words is, generally, not the right thing to do and won't improve reality. After finishing to nod (and smile a bit, there were some puns there that I was surprised to like), I started wondering - I did, and do, invest some time crafting my own vocabulary, and I use it even with people who did not go through this process with me - so how is it that I agree that we should not care too much about the words we use to communicate, and at the same time I spend quite a long while to find a Hebrew translation for "attended testing" just to replace "manual"?
After considering it for a while, I came to a conclusion that words matter - a lot. They just don't matter in the sense that you should fight for them. Professionally, words have mainly two functions for me - they are a means of communication, and they are a way to craft my thinking. When I insist that "Quality" is a horrible word, I do that in order to clarify to myself my own mission statement - I used my journey to get rid of this word in order to understand better that there are actually several properties I'm more interested in than others, and that they change according to the business needs.
I also use my words to surprise people and make them think - when someone is asking if we should automate some tests or do everything manually, I sometimes respond that yes, we should have some attended tests on top of the automation - not to correct them, but so that they will ask me "huh? what did you just say now?" and then I might be able to share with them my distinction - that skimming over something is not what I intend to do (or ask them to do) and instead the plan is to be fully engaged during this testing phase. I sometimes enter a rant about why I don't consider "automation engineer" to be a real job when talking with HR to differentiate myself from the horde of people looking to do "test infrastructure" work.
So, in sum, I do think that words are worth fussing over, I think they are worth discussing with other, willing people, and that the benefit of grooming your professional vocabulary are enough to put this sort of effort and have an internal, well thought of dictionary. It helps direct thought, it's a way to be part of a community, and it's a decent shortcut for communication. Arguing about words, however, has a price that might undermine your purpose. Sometimes you want to pick up a fight with someone to create some friction around language - you can mention that you prefer using "ensemble" instead of "mob" since the underlying violence in "mob" is excluding people or hints at the wrong group dynamic, you should stand up (if you can) when people are using derogatory or forceful terms and shutting down diversity of thought. But in those cases you are making the issue a conflict about language. A sort of "stop the train" move that will halt anything else going on until you reach some sort of a conclusion. If your goal is to learn, teach, share ideas on other topics - you won't be able to do so. You will also ruin everything for the rest of the people in the conversation, which might have some social cost. So, in most cases, you'd probably want to find ways to suggest your wording instead of creating a conflict around it.
