This approach may be an oversimplification with the thyroid, however, since thyroid neoplasms may show many morphologic features of malignancy yet behave clinically in a benign fashion. Further, certain thyroid tumors may have identical gross and microscopic morphology, yet exhibit totally different clinical progressions. Thus, the most important prognostic feature in thyroid malignancies is considered by many to be age of onset regardless of pathologic char- acteristics (41-45). Accordingly, there is an understandable divergence among pathologists and clinicians in regard to a uniform classification of these lesions. Clearly, the term "cancer" is a misnomer, imprecise and often misleading, and it should be abolished from thyroid nomenclature. Even designations of benign vs malignant must be used circumspectly with proper attention applied to clinical vs pathological connotations, since the correlations may be tenuous at best.