But the throws keyword means "this can throw", it's not used to actually handle exceptions at all. Exception handling always uses catch. I think breaking that pattern would be a terrible idea, even if you can make sense if it with English grammar

Make it "case threw" then lol. But then this isn't the first time a keyword in Java means different things in different contexts. Like "final", which means that a field or variable can't be modified but on a class it means it can't be extended and on a method that it can't be overridden.