I don’t think a definition-first approach is all that relevant for most users.

People also can’t easily _describe_ the difference between a dog and a cat, but most can distinguish between a dog and a cat and have an intuitive understanding of the implications (e.g. they expect the right behavior/traits when they see a four-legged animal).

I think one problem is that the people who design computers and software must be perfectly precise when building them, and easily forget that this is inherently not how most people interact with most things.