How the name frigate might have changed battlecruiser treaty treatment

The compound term battle cruiser encouraged treaty negotiators to group the type with battleships as another kind of battle vessel. Fisher's alternative label of frigate might have produced a different conceptual result. The older term carried an Age of Sail distinction between the line-of-battle ship and a powerful independent cruiser. That linguistic separation could have forced negotiators at Washington to consider the fast armored type as its own treaty category.