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by dsr_ 1185 days ago
This is the difference between standard usage and jargon.

Chemists consider any covalent compound involving carbon that isn't only carbon to be "organic".

Normal usage is what you wrote.

Alternative but widespread usage is "agricultural products made without synthesized fertilizers and pesticides".

Oh, and business jargon uses organic to mean "natural market growth or internally developed capabilities", as opposed to buying the growth or capability.

And in military usage, organic means "a permanently assigned assisting unit", so that routine vehicle maintenance, for example, is handled by people who travel with the vehicle.

2 comments

I've taken to using "organic-branded" for the agricultural products, since "organic" is essentially an FDA brand, with regulations for usage of the branding. Its also my personal rebellion against "organic" having a functional meaning of "magicalhealthygoodness" in some circles.
It's like astronomer talking about metals. By which they mean everything that's not hydrogen or helium.
> like astronomer talking about metals

This is particular to stellar astrophysics. Astronomers studying asteroids maintain the conventional definition.

To their credit, I remember something about basically every element ionizes to some extent in space, thus exhibiting the "sea of electrons" behavior characteristic of metals.