This term does not mean what you think it means

I've been reading up on apocalyptics while working on the Victorian anti-Catholic sermons, which reminded me of one of the great stumbling-blocks of interdisciplinary work: terms that drastically change their meanings from one discipline to the next.   Right now, I'm nearing the end of an account of "historicism," which as a mode of Biblical exegesis has nothing to do with anything an English professor would recognize as "historicism" (or a historian, for that matter).  Catholic "Modernism" can also be something of a problem.  What others come to mind? "The most high-profile instance I can think of is "theory" in the sciences.  (Doesn't "random" also have a different meaning in mathematics than in the outside world, or have I misremembered that?)

Comments

[SEK]

IIRC, the entirety of Deleuze and Guattari's Milles Plateaux is dedicated* to this very subject.

*May not be the right word.

[Harry]

Not quite the same thing, but I remember finding it irritating searching academic databases for the term 'Anglo-Saxon' (applied to pre-1066 England) and finding lots of stuff about 'Anglo-Saxon' philosophy or economics, where what they actually meant was 'Anglo-American'. Or possibly 'not French'.

[Ling.Lass]

Yes—I’ve observed that “prototype”, “pragmatic”, and “discourse”, cause all sorts of problems for people crossing disciplines.

[Brandon]

paradigm!

[Arnold]

'Commonwealth literature' can be confusing for a seventeenth-century historian. Then of course there's 'revisionism' (a term I first encountered in the context of the 'origins of the English Civil War' debate), which is now such a loaded expression I've given up using it. Come to think of it, 'Civil War' is quite a confusing term too -- I've come across people who refer to themselves as 'Civil War historians' without bothering to explain which Civil War they're talking about ..

[Andre Mayer]

Bias. There was a huge brouhaha a generation ago about whether or not standardized tests are "biased," which to psychometricians meant something like "yielding different scores for the same answers."

[A. Mused]

"Regime" is a good one. Oh, and the seemingly innocent transitive verb "to read"!