It seems to me that lots of people are experiencing lots of confusion regarding what lots of the testing terms we throw around signify. In an effort to remedy this circumstance I have applied my investigatory powers to observe what people really mean when they say these words. Forthwith, the answers which I have compiled:

Categories of Tests

• Build Verification Tests: "Did they even bother to test this?" The oft-used synonym "smoke test" comes from the similar question "What were they smoking when they checked this in?"
• Exit Scenario Tests: A test of the executives' exit strategies.
• Basic Functionality Tests: The set of all tests which are executed.
• Comprehensive Tests: The set of tests which will never ever be executed.

Build Ratings

• Self Toast: The build had a nasty bug and now the lab machines are all being rebuilt.
• Self Test: The build had a nasty bug and now the product team's machines are all being rebuilt.
• Self Host: The build had a nasty bug and now the executives' machines are all being rebuilt.

Types of Tests/Testing

• Positive Test: A test which is so confident it will never fail that it does not bother to verify and/or log anything.
• Negative Test: A test which has never ever passed. And no one cares.
  
• Black Box Testing: Blindly flailing about hoping against hope to find a bug.
• White Box Testing: Coding.
• User Scenario Testing: Pretending we understand how our customers are going to use our product.
• Acceptance Testing: Pretending we know how to tell whether a feature is done.
• Regression Testing: Verifying that the developers didn't really fix those bugs.
• Performance Testing: Annual exercise to determine how big of a bonus each executive receives.
• Load Testing: Determining how much overtime the team can take before they fall ill.
  
• Exploratory Testing: "Hey tester, go do whatever you want and tell me when you're done."
• Scripted Testing: "Hey tester, exactly execute these test steps I wrote ages ago, back before anybody knew anything about how anything would actually work."

Bug Resolutions

• By Design: That "bug" is really a feature.
• Duplicate: A quick way to raise your score in bug bashes.
• External: Not our problem.
• Fixed: It works on my machine!
• No Repro: I don't want to deal with this.
• Postponed: Let's all pretend we will fix this some day.
• Won't Fix: As if! Why did you even bother logging this?

(Yes, my tongue is firmly in my cheek! To learn what I really think these terms mean, see my DDJ posts Test Taxonomy Decoder Ring and More Decoder Rings.)

*** Do these definitions seem all too familiar? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.