I am writing some technical docs. There is a technical term that has no official definition, as there is no definition for that term in any formal specs. However, there is a widely-accepted definition for that term in the tech community. In this case, can I refer to that definition as "an idiomatic definition", as in
There is no official definition for what X is, as you cannot find it in the spec. However, there is an idiomatic definition that the community has been using over the years
Answer
I wouldn’t say "idiomatic definition". I’ve not heard "idiomatic" used like this. It means "consisting of language that is natural to a native speaker" so literally, it means that the definition is written in idiomatic language.
If you don’t want "unofficial definition" you could rephrase in terms of "understanding".
There is no official definition for what deep cloning is, as you cannot find it in the spec. However, the term is generally understood in the community.
There is no official definition of "Deep cloning", as you cannot find it in the specification, but it is generally understood to mean a fully independent copy of an object, duplicating all references within the object.
Or if there is a precisely phrased definition, just not in the spec, then cite that
There is no official definition of "Deep cloning", as you cannot find it in the specification, but Chris Chu defines it as "a copy of all elements of the original object" so that "changes made to the original object will not be reflected in the copy".
Finally, if you are describing something everyone knows and so you can’t find a particular source you can say
There is no official definition of "Deep cloning", as you cannot find it in the specification. Here I use the term to mean…
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Joji , Answer Author : James K
