The differing semantics of 'pumpkin spice'

For some reason, many of posts are about food. This might just stem from my urge to always try various things, regardless of if it is necessary to do so or not. Regardless, this post is about my now yearly battle with various products marketed as being 'pumpkin spice'. These are primarily drinks of the obtainable-at-coffee-shop-variety, but may also apply to other things. The main issue is that 'pumpkin spice' is a term which may be ambiguous, and I have found that it can specify usually two different flavors. The first of these being pumpkin and the associated spices which are normally found to be associated with pumpkin in pies, breads, and other baked goods. In that case the pumpkin flavor is usually light (especially in drinks), but is definitely there. However, a second interpretation of the term leaves out the pumpkin entirely, and includes only the flavor of the spices which are normally associated with pumpkin- nutmeg, ginger, etc. It is almost never specified which it will be when ordering, and unless you know from experience, it might be quite surprising when you expect to taste pumpkin and then don't. This is the case with practically every 'pumpkin spice' flavored coffee, with the exception of Green Mountain Coffee's quite delightful offering. For some reason this goes for flavor syrups for lattes as well, even though I would think that it would be quite easy to include pumpkin flavor in a concentrated sugary syrup. Maybe the flavor is actually there, but I'm always just looking for it to be stronger... like in the case of the Stash Pumpkin Spice tea- pumpkin was indeed listed as an ingredient, but I wasn't able to taste it very much. Anyway, I don't really have any interest in being a food or coffee snob, I just find this interesting, and happen to have a holiday season obsession with trying pumpkin spice things (and seasonally flavored limited offerings in general). My official stance on food is that it is nothing more than  what is required for continued survival, but that ends up being a little difficult to implement in practice.