[bigbadfeline]

> but boiled water is steam > We do not have separate words for freezing water or boiling water.

I don't know how it is in other languages but in English "boiled water" and "boiling water" refer to different things - boiled water may be steam or water that has underwent some boiling, e.g. for sanitation, on the other hand "boiling water" refers strictly to water that is in the process of boiling.

I can see why some languages may have a separate word for one of these concepts to avoid some of the ambiguity.

I'm not a fan of extending the language with new words unless they are compound (with or without spaces) but extending the dictionaries with more and better descriptions is a no-brainer, there's a lot missing from them.

[georgefrowny]

Yes, and substitution of boiled for boiling water has produced many terrible cups of tea.

It depends on the tea, but some cannot be well made with a metal pot of water that's taken a few minutes to get from the kettle to the table.

[ndsipa_pomu]

Arguably it depends more on the atmospheric pressure to get boiling water as close as possible to 100°C.

The general rule of thumb is that black tea (i.e. fermented tea leaves) should be brewed at 100°C, green tea (non-fermented tea leaves) should be brewed around 80°C to avoid it being bitter and white tea (young, non-fermented tea leaves) is best at around 70°C.

[vidarh]

I'd argue that boiled water very specifically refers to the water left ofter after boiling water, not steam. Steam is no longer water, at least not in common parlance.

Boiled water does have the extra connotation that it is presumed to be mostly sterile, which, while not hard to derive from the fact it has been boiling, is not immediately clear. After all the past tense does not tell us how recently it was boiled.

For that reason I'd argue that if one of boiling water and boiled water should be in the dictionary, it should be boiled water. Of the two, it is the term that potentially carries extra information.