I see your point and I agree. The term has become too diluted. I don't have a good solution to the problem. Perhaps dropping the term is the way to go, but I'm not sure what I'd replace it by. I guess we can start saying "we have too much throwaway code left in production".

You just hit exactly on the right topic: I think we don’t need a replacement. Your example is perfect, just name the actual issue and deal with it. That’s frankly all I really propose in the end.

Also, I think that some decisions are to be made within the development team. It is not for the business to tell them how to develop and keep the code base healthy. Some thing you just do and they are just cost of doing business.

Business wants features and never wants to say, ok do maintenance tasks for a month. I’ve seen it play out, a lack of critical maintenance imposed by product caused days of expensive outages across multiple customers.

Thanks for being my sounding board :)