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Would it be wrong of me to coin the terms Natural Organic Oil and Natural Coal? They are both, in fact, natural and organic after all. Adding a prefix like Natural or Organic definitely resonates with a lot of people and builds a perception that it’s “clean.” It’s not ridiculous to point out this fact, it was clearly chosen with intent to mislead. The problem with Oil and Coal is that it’s hard to sell it this way because they’re already widely known to be disastrous for the environment.


If you could do that in a letter exchange with Humphry Davy, Lavoisier or other scientist in 1750-1850, that would be fine, though they would probably ask why. There were scientific reasons for giving the name to natural gas (to differentiate from manufacturing process). Can you suggest any reason for your terms?

Anyway, if you would do it today, it is really hard to justify, not least because there exist new meanings of the words now and there exist already sufficiently good classifications. Context does matter.




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