The sharing economy dictionary of commonly used terms - by Rachel Botsman. Terms can become hard to define when they become too big. By too big, I do not mean in terms of impact or scale. It happens when the connections between a broad church of products, services and ideas becomes so loose and diluted that the umbrella term starts to lose meaning. The more inaccurately the term is applied the more its value is questioned, and eventually the flame of meaning behind an important concept burns out. It becomes a passing buzzword. Is this the current state of the so-called ‘sharing economy’?