Microtone, Microtonal, and Xenharmonic Definitions

> Britannica says :
> "Music using tones that are not an exact number of semitones (half steps)
> apart."
> This interpretation is flawed, since the word *is* "micro"-tone, implying an
> interval smaller than some reference interval, namely a 12EDO semitone.

That's probably a good basis for "microtonal" though: Music based upon pitches
"in the cracks between the keys" so to speak, be they due to a single microtonal
interval alone or the intervalic sum of several of them.

I too have never heard anybody getting "xen" and "zen" confused, although
some amusement over the similarity of sound has come up in conversation.
Clearly
though that has a lot to do with whether we're dealing with written or oral
communications.

It's worth noting that Jonathan Glasier, one of Ivor Darreg's biggest fans
and
his biggest benefactor, doesn't personally like Ivor's term (xenharmonic),
because
the entire goal of working with unusual pitch relationships is to make them to
NOT
be considered strange ("xen" of course being the Greek term for "foreign" or
"strange").