Controversial misused words
There are words that have controversial definition. Do you know any?
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Example
Hacker - is a computer programmer
Hacker (Misused)- is someone who breaks in computers
Cracker - is someone who breaks into computers
The general society uses hacker term for people who break into computer but correct term is cracker. This is a different post from post about misused words. I talking about words that society uses differently from the professional in there area.Are both definitions right or is one wrong?
Society jargon vs professional jargon
5 Answers
I present another example which I hope will serve to amuse, although neither of the activities I am going to mention are professions in the real sense of the word.
People often call those who commit robberies 'thieves', and those who commit thefts 'robbers' (where I come from, at least, the people are generally ignorant of the difference between these two offences).
But a robber is someone who forces another person to part with his possessions under threat whereas a thief is someone who unlawfully deprives another person of his property without his knowledge. (These definitions are not exact but are sufficient for our purpose).
Thus, there might occur a robbery at a bank during working hours or there might occur a theft at night when the bank is closed. The two offences are different.
Thieves and robbers are not the same.
LoL! That's a new one for me. I thought that there were "good" hackers and "bad" hackers, but I never heard of "crackers" in that sense. Here in the Southeastern US, a cracker is a derogatory term for a poor, underprivileged, uneducated white person. "cracker" or "poor white trash"
People are called lawyers although the correct technical term for such persons should be "advocate" or "attorney" or "barrister" (depending on the country we are talking about) whereas a lawyer, in the true sense of the word, can be someone who just treats the law as the subject-matter of his writings. In this sense is used the term "Roman lawyers".
I hope you get my point. I am a law student and in my jurisprudence courses, I have come across the term 'lawyer' used for persons who were actually legal thinkers and did not practice the law before the courts. Where I come from, the correct term (professional jargon as you call it) is "advocate" whereas common people call them "lawyers" (i.e. the society jargon).
I concede, however, that the term "lawyer" itself is not frowned upon within the legal community even if this is not the case with the term "hacker" within the community of crackers.
The word hacker has several definitions, including the two you gave above. Neither one of them is incorrect, and the term cracker is not often used with the same meaning by computer professionals. A cracker is usually a program for cracking passwords or decipering a specific code, although the word cracker is not often used alone but rather in a phrase like "password cracker".
Many words from physics, higher mathematics, and psychiatry (as well as other disciplines) are often misused in lay contexts. This is so prevalent that I consider both definitions correct and simply take into account the context when I hear such a word.
And don't get me started on jargon
