I get the impression that some people are offended by the use of the word
"pseudowork" perhaps because they think it is intended as a pejorative
expression. For me at least, nothing could be further from the truth.
The term is in wide use, precisely because the expression that it
represents *is* useful. Arons has a nice discussion of it in section 5.7
of his "Guide to Introductory Physics Teaching" where he distinguishes
between it and the "work" that appears in the First Law of Thermodynamics
One of the most well-respected introductory textbooks by, Resnick,
Halliday, and Krane, has this to say (4th Edition, page 193):
"Some authors use the terms pseudowork or center-of-mass work to describe
the left side of Eq. 35 [which shows the integral of the net external
force over the parallel component of the CM motion, JM]. This equation is
sometimes known as the center-o-mass equation. We prefer not to introduce
a term closely related to work to describe a quantity that is unrelated to
the accepted meaning of work."
In other words HR&K are unwilling to give *any* name containing the word
"work" to what I (and many others) call pseudowork. I find my stance
pretty moderate in comparison!