I've been making videos about building software and now focusing on Event Sourcing, CQRS, and Domain-Driven Design. I keep seeing terms related to these used confidently, but meaning very different things. I remembered reading about this a while ago and I managed to hunt down the post by Martin Fowler back in 2006: Semantic Diffusion.
It's when a term gets defined with a clear definition, then spreads like a game of telephone. Each retelling isn't quite accurate it until distorts the original meaning. Fowler uses "Agile" as the classic example. I see the same with Domain-Driven Design, Event Sourcing and CQRS.
He was optimistic about it. He spoke about terms like "object-oriented" and "patterns" going through the same thing before they recovered, because people kept re-articulating what they actually meant.
In many ways, that's basically what I'm trying to do.
Had a chuckle at semantic inversion, where a term ends up meaning its opposite.
Fowler mentions here about his habit of creating neologisms, which I find interesting. I have the same tendency.