Portal Site != WSS Site != Site != Subweb != Site Collection != ???

Sharepoint is a neat product. It has the potential to help organizations do quite a bit as far as collaboration, managing data, etc. But for some reason, people talk about Sharepoint with slightly gritted teeth that only now do I fully understand.

What do I mean? Check out Todd Bleeker's blog post from over a year ago trying to detail the terminology involved with Sharepoint:

I get odd questions like this all the time:

How is a "portal site" different from a "WSS site" different from a "site" in a SharePoint portal different from a Web different from a Subweb different from an Area? And by the way, what's a Topic?

...

That said, when you see the term "portal site" in SPS administration, SPPT really means the Site Collection of Areas (think special Webs). An Area is just a WSS Web based upon a unique Site Definition that leverages special SPS metadata, SPS Web Parts, and SPS administrative screens.

So even though Todd does a good job trying to detail the terminology, he still ends up drifting back into dark regions just 2 paragraphs below a clear explanation of some of the terms.

Hopefully this is something that can get correct and perhaps we'll all be able to understand what the heck a "site" is when talking about Sharepoint (and what Sharepoint is for that matter - SPS? WSS? MOSS? CMS? etc, etc)