Definition
Plain language
Knowing what someone actually wants from what they said, not just what the words mean.
As stated in the literature
The branch of linguistics covering implicature, speech acts and context-dependent interpretation; distinguished from semantics, and the locus of the memory failure identified here (facts retrieved but not deployed in response to an indirect cue).
Also called: pragmatic, pragmatically
Why it matters: A system can hold all the right facts and still feel oblivious if it can't read what an indirect remark is actually asking for.
For example, when someone says 'it's freezing in here,' they usually want the window shut, not a temperature reading.
Heard on the show
“The clever pragmatic choice is what they don't measure.”Episode 016 — Why Your Coding Agent Stalls While the GPU Runs Hot