Referential indeterminacy
Encyclopedia
Referential indeterminacy is a linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 term referring to situations in which different people vary in naming objects. For example, William Labov
William Labov
William Labov born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist, widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics...

studied this effect using illustrations of different drinking vessels to see what people would label as "cups" and what people would label as "mugs".
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