Interesting. We (the development team that drives the master control and playout of a 13-billion dollar media network) use the word internally all the time. Sorry if using the correct word for a given thought annoys you.

Not sure what happened to my last post. Not going to re-type it all but will re-post the key points. 1) functional programming is more than just writing code with functions instead of objects. 2) language absolutely does matter. If a language does not support optimized tail-recursion then certain functional processes simply cannot be done, because most languages DO handle all function calls by pushing things to the stack like you say, but functional-friendly languages don't when tail recursion is used, so that deep recursion can happen without blowing up the stack. Support for first-class functions, immutability and lambdas is also very important though the latter is not strictly necessary. 3) "paradigm" is a word that means something that we have been using for at least 30 years. If you think it's a "buzzword" then you clearly lack any deep experience. 4) you are the only person I have seen here say anything about "strict" functional languages.

Ironically it seems to me that you are the one that doesn't understand what functional programming is since you keep saying "functional/procedural" as if they were similar things instead of 2 completely different paradigms. Also acting like functions being objects in JavaScript makes it a non-functional language when in fact that is the very reason that it is good for functional programming. While it is true that there are very few languages that are "strictly" functional, functional programming does not mean "programming without objects".