>>So if a word has more than one meaning, it doesn't count?
>
>Maybe as a half. I don't mind words with multiple meanings, they are fun, it's that there are so many things which don't have any word which has them as a primary meaning. That's a hand-me-down, not a word dedicated to a thing.
>
>It actually causes me a lot of trouble when I need to translate something. More often than one would guess, it happens that I can't use the nearest word, because its primary meaning may be taken by the reader, and that would change the meaning of the whole sentence. Then, also not too seldom, the next available word also has a misleading primary meaning. So I eventually have to rework the whole sentence beyond recognition, using words which are not as close to the original as the first choices were, but are not so ambiguous.
>
>Next time when I get to translate something (if I ever dare do that), I'll take notes and post the worst dozen cases here.


The two of us are certainly among the worst dozen cases here <lol>.

I think it comes down to a certain amount of trust in the reader. A writer is obligated to express things as clearly as he or she can but can't work in fear that some reader somewhere will mistake the meaning. Some reader probably will. Have a reasonable target audience in mind and have faith that they will somehow muddle their way through.