Why is the word "thread" not allowed on Meta?

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

I believe it’s related to:

Terminology: topics vs threads

I was curious to see a discussion about why topics are called topics and not threads (the more common term in online forums, according to my experience) but so far I have not been able to find any. Has this really not been discussed previously? Personally, I have gotten used to the discourse terminology but I find it somewhat of a pain when trying to explain things to new users, as “topic” is not intuitively understood while thread is well known from email and other online forums. Yet, I am rel…