Incorrect handicapping terminology

On a trivial matter I've questioned for many years whether the word "penalty" is correctly used in this country, so am now putting it to the forum.
Imo a "penalty" should be applied to a conditions race, as in a horse gets a penalty of 2kg for every win or a 2kg pnealty for a Grade 1 win etc.
Whe a horse goes up 3 points in the merit ratings that's not a penalty imo, that's a "raise".
In England they only adjust the merit ratings at the end of the week so if a horse wins on Tuesday and runs again on Thursday it is given a penalty before the raise.
Imo thats the only circumstance in which the word penalty should be used in a handicap.

Plus when a horse is a cert we call it a Penalty kick.............lol

Scotia let me know when you taking your next penalty kick

Sometimes a penalty kick can be strange!

Under racing terminology I have a book that says.

Penalty - A weight added to the handicap weight of a horse.

Tipster, I agree with you.

When you are handicapping a race you are really accessing how good a performance is, and if a horse has improved one has to adjust the rating to reflect new knowledge, just as you would plot the progress of a human athlete's times. If a horse runs a 70 and then follows up with a 90, I change it's rating but it doesn't occur to me as a 'penalty'. I'm happy to have found another good horse.

Of course, if the official handicapper has found it too then the nett effect may be to stop that horse in it's tracks and it then has indeed been 'penalized' from a perspective of being able to win races and win money. If it's an honest horse and ran close to it's real ability, then unfortunately we has to stop it so that inferior or eratic horses can beat it.

The rating only has an effect when we apply it to the weights in races though, and the handicapper is merely performing a function for us as per our instructions. Our sport...our rules. So the question is, why (when the merit rating system of handicapping started and the program had 10% of races as handicaps) did we allowed it to overwhelm the sport as it has?