Please answer

Why is it partly sunny in the daytime and partly cloudy at night?

Semantics.

Look it up.

Why the glass is half full and not half empty ?

1) Here we are interested in which property ? conduction under some condition (or excitation) and nonconducting otherwise.

2) The forbidden gap (is it the term ? I am not sure ) is much smaller than the insulator.

3) In most of the cases after conducting it can brough back to insulating without irreversible breakdown

These are some things that comes to mind (cooked up )

Because engineers are more interested in their conductive properties.

Because the two ajacent letter I's in "semiinuslator" look funny?

The two dots look like a umlaut.

Or a pair of beady little eyes staring back at you. Taunting you about why that clever little circuit you just cobbled together went zzzaaap and died.

The primary purpose of semiconductors is to conduct and allow current to flow (it was back then and still is now). You don't call a light a "dark sucker" that sucks all the dark out of a room leaving only light (well most people don't).

Have a look on the internet, there is bound to be an article on the history of the name.

My interpretation is intent. Is a glass half full or half empty? If you are emptying a full glass and stop half way, it is half empty because it was your intent to empty the glass. But if you are filling the glass and stop half way it is half full because your intent was to fill it. A semi conductor is so named because that was the intent of its use.

Regards JD.