As well as fulfilling our need to mark intellectual territory, naming a complicated concept lets us talk about it in an efficient manner. In the interest of saving time, the first lessons in any subject must impart this kind of basic vocabulary. In most scientific subjects, new students understand this instinctively because they are learning about things which are truly new to them. Physics students start at a disadvantage in that the vocabulary of physics is made up of everyday words which must take on new meanings. The boundary between common language and scientific jargon becomes harder to discern.
Most common words have a large number of possible meanings.
Unless you are very careful, you will interpret the word with its connotation rather than its scientific definition. The same thing is true of any scientific term which enjoys common usage in other contexts. If you practice a science long enough, you eventually learn to be very cautious of this kind of confusion. When communicating in a scientific context, I have learned to take each word as having only one possible meaning, regardless of how it is being used. As a beginning physics student, you need to realize that every piece of vocabulary has a unique meaning, one which is precisely defined in the context of the subject.