User:Quercus solaris/Two that should have been one but were two, and two that should have been two but were one

Regarding the reservation of particular inflections for particular senses, a new instance rose to my attention, and as with urinary diversion versus urine diversion, we see that ...

A similar process kept reticulocyte and reticular cell from being synonymous. The duality comes from the fact that more than one thing in biology can be a net or mesh (a reticulum), and thus more than one type of cell can be associated with such a net (whether by creating it or by constituting it—that is, whether by producing it or by being it). Add some idiomatic boundaries and you've got some ontologic silliness. The reticulocyte article says that "they are called reticulocytes because of a reticular (mesh-like) network of ribosomal RNA that becomes visible under a microscope with certain stains such as new methylene blue." Meanwhile, the reticular cell article explains that reticular fibers of collagen secreted by reticular cells crosslink to form a fine meshwork (reticulin), and that this network acts as a supporting mesh in soft tissues. Still, one would expect from natural language that reticulocyte and reticular cell would end up as a typical pair of Latinate-versus-anglicized synonyms, and that the multiple senses would be handled by collocation with additional modifiers, thus, something like blood reticulocyte or hemoreticulocyte versus collagen reticulocyte or chondroreticulocyte. And indeed, in an alternate universe, that could have been how idiom ended up going. But not in this one, it didn't.

But speaking of reticula, i.e., redes, and two things that should have been one but remained separate, it reminds me of una otra red through which we hear of two things that should have been different but were the same, y me recuerdo que «cerró la puerta, y dijo, a través de la red metálica, —Es la misma vaina.»