mr. VMU;
regardless of what you said, i will stay with the old dino's that mention "the step"
perhaps not proper terminology, but the event actually happens on a regular basis.
you get the jet at cruise, especially heavy and 2000 feet above your optimum as Boeing recommends if there is a chance to get stuck at a lower altitude if you don't take this one now. and with the changes in CG as all the trolleys and slightly heavy cabin crew move around along with heavy passengers, and add that to headwinds, small gusts of turbulence, and tired autothrottles and autopilots and you can watch the aircraft slow and the nose pitch up to hold altitude. and it will sit there on the backside of whatever you want to call it!
and one either must make a PA and have lots of people move aft, or add some thrust to push the aircraft back over the whatever you want to call it, to get it back to where it should be.
i fly a 737-300/400 and have seen it happen for all the years i've been in both seats. and i can imagine that with the even longer 747's that it can be more pronounced, much more with the older big iron models.
please don't imply the older pilots are uncommonly ignorant, (and not just because i am becoming one myself-older that is)
a comparison, though limited, could be my considering you to be "ignorant" because you don't know the proper terminology of all the processes that occur in you hands and fingers and allow you to use them like you do. but you know when they hurt and how you have to change your method of operations to achieve certain moves.
we are all ignorant about a lot of things. so when one "ignorant" person calls another ignorant person, "ignorant", i laugh.
and don't ignore the increased instructions and terminology you might have received over the instruction that we older guys were given. and the very real change in aircraft characteristics! i was told to fly the airplane and let it teach me what i really needed to know. terminology is just another tool.
we can all learn from each other. i see older pilots and i want to learn all i can from them regardless of the lack of terminology. and when i see a new pilot with 300 hours join me in the right seat, i also want to learn from him/her some things that i may have forgotten or even didn't know that i didn't know.