Thanks all. ;-)

I am far from mastering all the nuances of the English language. So,
what you see in this thread is rather the top of the iceberg, because
the issue is quite obviously related to my German origins.

This language is said to be easily learned *AND* mastered by
germanophones. Which is a lot of whatever you tend to insert, here. But
as an answer and possibly valuable addition to the previous comments,
let me explain that the German language and, -to some extent-, also the
French, *want* to have one word for everything. There should be no need
for context, emotional, cultural.., whatever.., background, ideally, to
understand anything. As a non-native English-speaker, I must admit that
the English language is at its best, where the exact contrary is
accomplished... But this makes the (livelong) learning curve utterly
steep and sometimes frightening... ;-)

English Internet forums are in consequence very exciting.., and where
German forums appear to be boring, they most probably are.

Michael

On Wed, 08 Jul 2015 10:36:24 +0100,
Andy Wilkes wrote:
On 08/07/2015 10:13, Nick Maclaren wrote:
The English language is defined by its usage and, the older I get,
the less I am worried by such usages in 'conversational' contexts.
"Synthetic dust" is clear and concise, in context, though I agree
that strictly it means something else.

Yes - I somehow don't see a big demand for it. Therefore it's unlikely
companies are going to spend much researching ways to produce synthetic
dust

(There will now be a rush of people referring to actual scenarios where
synthetic dust - as opposed to real dust - is important...)

Crop dusting perhaps (to sort of bring it back on topic).



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