[johnny]

Originally Posted by Quiet Man Cometh

I disagree with this as far as those are pretty specific words. A pianoforte is a specific type of instrument, and an old way of referring to one. Unless the thing actually is a piano, why not be more general and call it a keyboard?

I think the issue with that is the idea of how the terminology is associated in the minds of the reader. I used pianoforte as an example because of the setting I threw out there: a Regency-inspired fantasy, set on a non-Earth world. Pianoforte is the sort of thing they would say in a Regency story, so it fits with the "era" of the world. Words have different connotations that could help reinforce a story or take a reader right out of it. The word "keyboard," even though it's the simplest way to describe something like a piano, is more readily associated with the electric type, so I'm not sure would fit in with a history-inspired setting.

That's along the same lines of my dilemma: at what point when worldbuilding do you have to value "scene setting" over etymology and logic?

Your later comment does help a lot, though. As does Gallagher's about setting rules first and then adhering to them. This is just something I struggle with while in the planning stages of writing. See also: "Do all my characters have to have made-up names if they're in a world where the origins of Earth names don't exist?"