What a great point to make about language in situations that are not technical! Like how theory is used differently outside of scientific contexts, which is language naturally evolving.

But this is like someone trying to use the lay definition of theory, which is the equivalent of a hypothesis in acience, in a scientific context. A scientist saying “that is just a theory” to dismiss the theory of relativity in a scientific context would be rightfully corrected by their peers.

Using legacy software wrong is like using API to describe something other than an API.