Quote Originally Posted by Watchman
As in so many cases dealing with archaic military terminology, we're confronted with the ugly fact people back then simply didn't have the same urge to classify everything into neat well-defined categories we have. Instead we often enough get lexigraphers scratching their heads over a term which meant something quite different a few hundred years ago, and wasn't exactly employed in a very consistent fashion during his day either...
You bet. I personally think it's the result of the relatively "elite" intellectual status ascribed to popular historians during the the course of modern history. They relied a lot on abstractions, as was typical of scholars who sought to summarize poorly understood cultures (E.g. George Rawlinson and his "The Seven Great Monarchies"), and it is not until past the age of Max Weber when we finally see social studies continuously reaching new heights and acquiring a somewhat more empirical method, not completely unlike the "Scientific Method". During this age, we begin to see entire circles of studies grow large and influential enough to propel research and maintain scholastics. This is where we usually observe the first signs of conflict. Deprecated, archaic, inaccurate or over-abstracted terminology, most likely firmly established during a long period of published scholastics. Trying to change the order of the day... It's like surfing towards a huge wave, it will end in a lesson of futility.