Language matters, people. Language matters. From American public media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Riznal. It is Monday today, the 25th of September.

Market is always to have you along, everybody. A vocabulary story is where we start the week, wordsmithing with very real economic effects on the line.

The government shutdown countdown clocks are going. Republicans in the house are still betwixt and between.

We though will leave the parsing of the political moment to others and use this opportunity to talk about what is almost certainly going to happen.

Because given how many times we have been down this road, we all know that shutdown isn't exactly the right word. Marketplace is Kimberly Adams.

It's been her day asking her around to find a better way to describe things.

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, even though.

The government in many ways does not actually shut down.

Matthew Lakom teaches political science at Case Western Reserve University. He points out things like Medicare and Social Security and the military continue operating.

So maybe a brown out would be a better descriptor. The power is not totally off. It's just scaled down and operating dysfunctionally.

And which parts get scaled down depend 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.

Romina Bacchia is with the Cato Institute. For example, she says snap food benefits have the funding to continue through October, although WIC, a benefit for mothers and children could face cuts immediately.

And some programs are funded by their own fees, like certain visa programs. Bacchia says we could call this a partial government slowdown or.

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

That doesn't really roll off the tongue either Donna Hoffman teaches political science at the University of Northern Iowa and says it might be more accurate to call it a disruption rather than a shutdown.

But whatever we call it says Hoffman, as long as 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.

And failing on a pretty regular basis in Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams from Marketplace.

On Wall Street, the day lapse in appropriations, what lapse in appropriations? We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

Though details are as of yet sketchy, there is a tentative deal in the Hollywood writer's strike, that leaves actors on the picket lines and elsewhere in organized labor, auto workers, who are now on day 10 of their strike against GM Ford and Stellantis.

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