Barnes Wallis' original patents for
fuselage,
wings and
airframe all use the word "geodetic", and personally I'm inclined to go with his version. He was cleverer than me!
I think he first published a journal paper on the science of it sometime in the mid 1930s, probably in "aircraft engineering", but I can't find a reference to that - I have seen the paper whilst browsing in a university library some years ago.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all access old British patents and RAE TNs online in the same way we can US papers and NACA reports.
G