Using the term "neutral" as an example, this discussion examines difficulties that chemistry students face when trying to contextualize chemical terminology. Interview responses of 20 undergraduate students (majors in either chemistry or biology) indicate that some of students' context-based interpretations of "neutral" are shared, although up to half of the context-specific interpretations of the term differ from the scientifically accepted meaning of "neutral" implied by the sample contexts. Most evident is the association of the word "neutral" in a scientific context with the words "unreactive" or "equilibrium".