In attempting to exhibit the import belonging to this and other names of offenses in common use, I must be understood to speak all along with the utmost diffidence. The truth is, the import given to them is commonly neither determinate nor uniform: so that in the nature of things, no definition that can be given of them by a private person can be altogether an exact one. To fix the sense of them belongs only to the legislator.

IPML Chapter 16 Section 3 Part 1