Terminology, felting, fulling. Does it make anyone else NUTS??????

[GraceOblivious]

Oh my gosh, I must be a purist    It is truely distressing to see the broadening of the term "felting" .   The problem is that the broadening of the term, mades it less specific.  To me a felted purse, hat, or etc is something crafted from basically raw fiber (clean, but not preprocessed, preprocessing would be spinning, knitting, crocheting, weaving, etc) .  In pure felting, the craftster uses a process of wet, dry or a combination of wet and dry felting to get the fibers to adhere together.

Here are the terms as I understand them.

Historically felting, felt -- signified a non-woven, non-knit, non-croched fabric / item.  One that was made from fusing the fibers with aggitation (either wet or dry) until they adhered.

In wet felting, the process of fulling is where the fibers shrink in length and fluff in width.  Some call this blooming, or bulking up the felt.

When fabric is washed in a machine, this is a type of fulling -- it is an intentional shrinking and blooming.

Just food for thought.  Are semantics important.  To some yes, to others no. 

I confess, it does bother me.  Though am coming to accept, that the word is out in general usage and is not going to be reversed. 

Just needed to put my concern out there.  Not intending to be snippy, simply having a personal struggle as a word/terminology purist.  Can you help me be more comfortable with this or expain non-woven felt making more clearly to others?  Thanks.

P.S.

It bothers lots of feltmakers - there have been discussions on this on the feltmakers list - it leaves feltmakers in a dilema of how to clearly explain and differentiate their work.  Here is a link with definitions and info from feltmakers aspects for those who would like more info.
http://www.peak.org/~spark/feltlistFAQ.html

[jadey_mcshadey]

I agree wholeheartedly. Call me a snob, but felling requires a teeny, tiny portion of the effort of felting cloth and they diserve the differentiation.

I have to admit to being a bit of a wordie, though.

[annalou]

So many of my interests have words that have been confused or else have entirely different meanings (case in point:  "spinning" can mean spinning fiber into yarn or it can mean a type of exercise involving a stationary bike).

That said, I work part-time in a shop that sells all kinds of fiber-related things, and customers' use of wording can be really confusing!  For example, someone asks about felting books, and I direct them to the section.  Then, if I've forgotten to ask for clarification, I often find out they want to know about "knitted felting" instead of wet felting/needle felting, where I directed them.  Interesting observation, however, is that weavers tend to be better about their use of the terms.  They say "full" instead of "felt."  Knitters & crochetters, however, . . . I guess part of their confusion is that so many patterns & books use the word "felt" instead of "full."