Terminological Inexactitude

[Pete van de Gohm]

Almost finished reading "Trent's Last Case" by E. C. Bentley.  Trent
was writing a letter and discussing the use of words...  "Long words
are abnormal, and like everything else that is abnormal, they are
either very funny or tremendously solemn.... Then there's
"terminological inexactitude".  How we all roared, and are still
roaring, at that!"

Interesting for me was Churchill coined this phrase in 1906, Trent's
Last Case was  published in 1912.  Are their other examples of  the
phrase's use in fiction?

PS:  If you like detective fiction, this is a good one.

Best regards,

Pete van de Gohm

[Editor, Finest Hour]

Pete, oddly enough, "terminological inexactitude" was the only
Churchill entry in the 1941 first edition of the Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations; their number has increased somewhat since....

But the term has been misinterpreted over the years. Churchill coined
it not to describe an untruth, but what some MPs had dubbed "Chinese
Slavery"--the employment of Chinese at low wages in the Transvaal. In
my quotations book "Churchill By Himself" I added this comment by
Randolph Churchill:

"This celebrated example of polysyllabic humour was always to be
misunderstood and to be regarded as a nice substitute
for 'lie', which it plainly was not intended to be."