In certain cases, communication is not endangered by obvious misunderstandings, but by misunderstandings that may at first go unnoticed because they result from implicit assumptions: the parties involved use the same words and don’t realize that their respective concepts do not match.
In his talk, Derek Sivers provides some examples of some seemingly straightforward concepts, e.g. “address”, which of course includes providing a street name and house number, or does it?

From time to time, some “implicit assumptions hunting” may be in order as it keeps us aware of the fact that common terminology does not necessarily mean common understanding. This may be especially true for relatively young “concepts in the making”, such as most of the stuff that UX people are dealing with.
(see also the related post on “Language Barriers in the UX Profession”)