It's a good word that I use not infrequently (maybe once every year or so), but I think you and I use the term in slightly different ways.
For example, I'm not sure what the intended effect of this statement is:
"The administration's asymptotic treatment of the homeless problem leaves much to be desired."
As you know, but for the benefit of the others, if the locus of points approaches a line asymptotically, then it is 1) headed in approximately the right direction and 2) constantly getting closer to the goal, the distance between the curve and the asymptote becoming vanishingly small.
If the administration's treatment of the homeless problem were asymptotic, I might interpret this that the solution is always short of the mark, but that it was zooming in - eventually becoming quite good, and so the part about "leaves much to be desired" seems out of place to me. (Well, that's just the way I would interpret it.)
Other really good technical words I use all the time, because I think they make at least as much sense as the alternatives:
1) Heuristic - a solution method to a problem that is close enough most of the time, at least to start off with. Also known as a "rule of thumb" or a "general rule" in the vernacular. Interesting that this is not implied by the MW definition of the term, but in most computer science books, they explicitly call a heuristic a "rule of thumb."
"Drinking 8 glasses of water a day should not be treated as an absolute rule, but as a heuristic."
2) Orthogonal - meaning two things are independent, or unrelated. "Some people believe that wisdom and intelligence are orthogonal qualities, but I don't."
I've heard a few very nontechnical people use signal-to-noise ratio and bandwidth - these terms are almost mainstream.
k
