KC Lemson relates a story about how imprecise terminology can lead to mistakes, and points out in the end that such mistakes can be avoided with a little proactive thought. I know I have been tripped up in conversations where I assumed the terminology being used meant the same thing to the person I was speaking to as it did to me, only to find out how wrong I was later. KC has a good lesson and story: 

"... To him, this was basic vocabulary. He knew that registry keys are on the left-hand side of regedit and have folder icons, whereas registry values are on the right-hand side of regedit and have different icons depending on their type. To me, “registry key” was just a part of the vernacular I'd learned and there were different types of registry keys, such as DWORDs, strings, etc."