Does your point of view depend on context lenses?

Yesterday, a conversation with two employees included the phrase "anal-retentive". (For those of you who have ever seen my T-shirt, yes, it does have a hyphen.) One employee asked the other what he meant, so the other one explained.

"I thought that was 'meticulous'," the first one said.

"It can be," I interjected. "It depends how you use it. For example, you could tell me, 'Gee, boss, you sure are meticulous'. But, when you go home and talk to your girlfriend, you say, 'Boy, is my boss anal-retentive.'"