Sometimes I ponder whether inaccurate use of terminology causes us to misunderstand things as our perception is distorted by various associations.
For example, there is the term “pattern”. It is used in different contexts, and two uses are particularly useful - “design pattern” and “pattern recognition”. In Russian, this term is usually translated as “шаблон” which literally means “template”. Being a Russian, I've gotten used to perceiving this term as a “template” and I believe that had caused me to not understand properly several papers.
But then it dawned on me that “pattern” rather means “закономерность” (“pattern”) instead of “шаблон” (“template”). A template is an object that defines the properties of other objects, while a template is an object that represents the properties of other objects.
And the weird thing is that dictionaries don't always help to properly understand words. For example, Lingvo translates the term “pattern” in pretty much the same way - as a “template”.
As far as I can see, it's not just me that is susceptible to such biases. For example, the title of the famous GoF book “Design Patterns” is translated into Russian as “Шаблоны проектирования” (“Design Templates”) rather than “Закономерности проектирования” (“Design Patterns”) or “Часто используемые приемы проектирования” (“Common Design Techniques”). And I believe that this perpetuated the belief that the GoF book is about some ready-to-use templates for software architecture or rules to be followed to get a good architecture.