If I may jump into the pool for a moment or two.
I have avoided comment in this thread as (having done a couple of engine design courses in years long departed) I am comfortable that the down and dirty details are dreadfully complex and my understanding is not sufficient to make much in the way of any useful contributions.
Similarly, my involvement with pilot theory training in a previous life (and long standing observations of typical pilot texts and the like) convinces me that a lot of theory "training" is responsible for creating a lot of the real world understanding problems within the flying community. With engines, in particular, the dreadful variety of "definitions" is a never ending problem ..
Engine detail workings and design, like many topics (atomic theory is a good one which comes to mind) can be looked at from a range of complexity viewpoints, according to the needs of the discussion and the folk involved. When, such as in this present discussion, we find folk with different preferences, backgrounds and needs, the discussion can become a tad confusing and, even, a little heated.
With my engineer's hat on, if I were an engine designer (which I'm not and don't want to be) then I would be interested in precision in definitions/jargon, details of what this and that do, details of how this and that interact, etc.
With my pilot's hat on, I view an engine as a tool to be used and am interested in the basic guts of what's going on - there are bits which we would rather not have but are stuck with (the drag things), bits which we admire and seek (the thrusty bits) and bits which we can put to some sort of good use (net thrust available to make the airframe do useful things). Other pilots (SNS3Guppy is, I think, a good example) seek as much knowledge as they can come upon and are interested in digging down a lot deeper although not always successfully when it comes to jargon precision - that is not a criticism of such folk at all - just a fact of what happens when any of us seek to get into the nitty gritty of complex matters without going the full journey to where we might acquire an expert level of expertise.
Folk such as PBL, essentially, are academic in their background and conditioned to seek precision in discussion - hence his thrust in this thread.
Presuming that we all can keep our emotions in reasonable check, the real value of this sort of thread is that a variety of knowledge and technical competence levels can toss ideas around with the useful outcome that we might be able to go away from the discussion with a bit more of an understanding of what is going on in a particular process - whether engine operation, flight standards considerations .. whatever.
One useful comment I noted earlier is .. If all of the contributors to this thread were to be within the same room and conducting the same conversation .. the limitation of a non-refereed on-the-fly print discussion model is never far from being obvious ..