In article ,
Mark Hansen wrote:

On 09/20/09 22:28, Mike Ash wrote:
As to why you'd call it someone else, if it looks like a license, walks
like a license, and waddles like a license, I'm going to call it a
"license". It's easier to say and much more widely understood. Do you
refer to your car as a "motor vehicle"? That's what the authority calls
it, after all....


Hmmm. I've referred to my certificate as a certificate to aviation-
knowledgeable and non-aviation-knowledgeable folks alike and have
never been asked "what is a certificate".

Even though I assume some didn't know that what we have is called
a certificate, none found it necessary to ask me to clarify what I
was referring to.

Perhaps I just run in smaller circles :-)

How do you know they got the right meaning if they didn't ask?

Maybe it works better than I think it would. I don't believe I've
actually tried it. It's just that, to me, "certificate" conjures up a
cheap piece of paper that comes from completing a short training class
or something of the like. For example, I would expect a "bus driver
certificate" to *possibly* be a prerequisite for driving a bus, but not
cover the practical aspects of driving one.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon