Is there a better way to describe what we call a “government shutdown”?

The shutdown countdown clocks are going, and things in our nation’s capital are not looking promising at the moment. We’ll leave the parsing of the political moment to others, but let’s take our own moment to talk about language.

You’re going to hear a lot about a government shutdown this week. But, as we know from going through this way too many times, “shutdown” isn’t exactly a perfect term for what happens.

The official term for what will happen this weekend, if Congress doesn’t pass some funding bills, is a lapse in appropriations. But we call it a government shutdown. The catch?

“The government in many ways does not actually shut down,” said Matthew Lacombe, a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University.

He pointed out things like Medicare and Social Security and the military continue operating.

“Maybe a brownout would be a better descriptor,” said Lacombe. “The power is not totally off. It’s just scaled down and operating dysfunctionally.”

And which parts get scaled down depends on lots of different factors.

“So there are some government programs that, even though they are generally funded through annual appropriations, they do have some spending authority that goes beyond those appropriations,” said Romina Boccia with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in D.C.

For example, she said, SNAP food benefits have the funding to continue through October. But WIC, a benefit for mothers and children, could face cuts immediately.

And some programs are funded by their own fees, like certain visa programs. 

Boccia said maybe, we could call this a “partial government slow down”.

“If I had to pick a politically neutral term, I would say it is a funding lapse that affects government operations,” she said. “So a partial government funding lapse.”

That doesn’t really roll off the tongue either.

It might be more accurate to call it a “disruption” rather than a shutdown, said Donna Hoffman, a political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

She said what matters most is that people understand what it means.

“It’s representing a failure of one chamber of the Congress from doing one of its fundamental duties, which is appropriating funds in the treasury,” she said.

And failing, on a pretty regular basis.