Dave, if you stick your human factors head on separate from a business/accounting head, words matter. Classifying something as a cost creates a negative bias in the minds of those making decisions, which influences their whole perception of that function and how they treat it.
We work very hard on how we communicate to avoid all sorts of bias, and there is material for a number of PhDs in the sociology and psychology of accountancy, but because they don’t directly kill people when they get it wrong, it isn’t a growth field.