For me, in the context of security, terminology is good part of the difficulty. There is always that moment in which I confuse terms and I end up misunderstanding or being unclear.

While writing R.I.S.K.S. I often find myself using terms as synonymous when they are not, like password and passphrase. This is confusing and more dangerous than one might think.

So I maintain a glossary of terms and I stick to these terms as strictly as I can.

Qubes OS

TERM MEANING
compartmentalization everything isolated in its proper box: divide and rule
qube a specific Qubes OS virtual machine. It’s a XEN virtual machine

Secrecy and encryption

TERM MEANING
encryption a technique used to hide something from anyone who’s not supposed to have access to it.
secret anything that none else than you should know. It could be any file or directory of files.
secret-file a LUKS encrypted filesystem embedded in a file where secrets are stored.
credentials a username and a password.
username a mnemonic string of text identifying an identity/person/account.
password a mnemonic string of text and used to encrypt/decrypt something. Can be used in combination with username.
key anything used to encrypt/decrypt something or to identify something or both.
passphrase a long mnemonic string of text and used to encrypt/decrypt something. Can be used in combination with a key.
key-file a unique file used to encrypt/decrypt a secret-file. Can be used in combination with a passphrase.
pass a password manager software. It stores credentials and secrets in GPG encrypted files.
pass-file a text file GPG encrypted containing (at least) relevant information related to credentials or passphrases.
mpw a password generator based on a single master password.
mpw-file a text file GPG encrypted containing part of the inputs for mpw, a password generator. It contains no secrets.
coffin-file a secret-file which contains GPG-files and password-files for a specific identity.
identity-coffin a way to indicate two coffin-files, one containing GPG-files and one containing pass-files.
tomb-file a secret-file which contains any kind of secret.
graveyard a directory where secret-files are laid.
GPG: key-pair as set made of a private and a public key mathematically linked one to another
GPG: key-flag a key-pair feature and means “this key-pair is used for this activity/activities”
GPG: primary key-pair the first key-pair generated when you are creating an new GPG identity
GPG: subkey-pair a key-pair depending on a primary key-pair
GPG: key-ring a collection of key-pairs (belonging to you) and public keys (belonging to others)
GPG: revoke certificate a special file, generated when at the primary key-pair creation time used to revoke the validity of the key-par
GPG: trust ring core concept of the web of trust. It’s the set of signatures applied by others to your public signing key