Terms have an "inferred definition."

That is, what a term means is what the majority thinks it means after the first time they've heard it.

People will bring their own preexisting priors to any given term, and that bias will lead to what the term means, especially if it's a consistent bias many first-time hearers will share.

Terms like "context engineering" are useful because they mean the thing that most experts hearing it for the first time would think it means.

"Inferred definition" is itself a term coined by Simon Willison.