Here's my two cents, FWIW: The fault for the effects of poor communication does not fall on the English language for it's lack of overly specific terminology. The fault lies with every one of us, who uses terms like "database" ambiguously. If you *mean* something like MS-Access running on a local workstation, say so. If you *mean* something like a mega/giga/tera-OLTP, say so. We have the words... use them.

This has always been one of my pet peaves.... Too often, the speaker/writer has a fully formed specific idea of what he is talking about and in his own mind he knows what he, himself, specifically means by a word like "database" - - - but he fails to take into account the the context of the listener/reader with whom he is endeavoring to communicate. I always try to be concsious of ambiguities in certain terminology, and to explicitly resolve the specifics in my communication wherever warranted.

Most miscommunication that I see happening comes BOTH from speakers *and* listeners failing to notice (even fairly obvious) abiguities in their words.

For example, if there is *ANY* chance that the listener/reader might interpret my use of the word "database" as something like MS-Access, when I really mean something like SQL Server, .... *and* if that difference is germane to the discussion, I'll try to be very explicit in what I am talking about and why it is a relevant distinction.

I don't think we need to invent new words for this. In fact, I think it might actually be counter-productive because there are SO many combinations and permutations of database features, scopes, scales, etc... that we'd end up with such a proliferation of new words, they would only confuse things further.