Cary L. Brown wrote:
But you can't take a real word and totally bastardize the meaning of the word.
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But we do that all the time. Whenever something new comes along, either new terms are invented or old terms are adapted/reinvented. Just some examples:
-ping, which came from the operation of sonar and now is also a ICMP command for testing connectivity
-boot, which now means "start the device" but comes from "bootstrap program" which in turn comes from the phrase "pull one up by one's bootstraps"
-switching, which went from railroad to telephony to networking
-aircraft, wow, do we even want to go here, with port/starboard, rudder, pilot, hull, cockpit, turret, etc. all being borrowed from nautical terminology, and some of those, like turret, were in turn borrowed and redefined from earlier times.
So the idea that "impulse" could have a broader--or even completely different-- connotation than the classic Newtonian one is, to me anyway, entirely reasonable.