Climbing out of the Internet Hole

Middle school brain will tell me to use words like "thingy" and "that doodad" when referring to technical and mechanical equipment, because we wouldn't want anyone to know that we know anything technical, would we?  We wouldn't want to offend someone who didn't know the proper term. We wouldn't want to challenge any experts. And most of all, we wouldn't want anyone to expect us to actually know more about a technical subject than we actually do. (Who are we? Middle school brain and me, that's who.) That explains why I sometimes find myself calling an ethernet port an internet hole.

Although many technical terms are designed to exclude people from trades, confound middle managers, cheat customers and --if you'll pardon the expression --"swing dick," I hope the word "thingy" never falls from my lips again.