While discussing how to translate some idiomatic and necessary parts of AW in french in order to open the game to a larger audience (and to our nonenglish-speaking french friends), I got, what I think, is a kind of insight about Apocalypse World design.
The words you used, Vincent, are really a headache to translate... :P
Let's begin with the stats?
Cool:
How to express in a single short word the ability to keep cold in a tense situation? We've got the word "flegmatique", but it's far to long and the color isn't there. We've got the term "relax", but it's far to smooth. We've got the word "calme" but it's so colorless... "Zen"? Why not?...
Hard:
Sure, "Dur" isn't the good word. What about "balèze", "couillu", "ferme", "brut"?...
Hot:
Isn't easy to. We got propositions like: "sexy", "bandant", "classe", "canon"...
...
As far as I am concerned, I will use:
Cool: Zen
Hard: Brut
Hot: Canon
Sharp: Vif
Weird: Zarb'
...
One of us suggested to use common nouns in place of adjectives, that's where came my kind of insight.
My first reaction was to say:"No! Adjectives participate in the color first design that vincent wanted for Apocalypse World! The name of the stats are here to be colorful."
Adjectives have the role to qualify the nouns. The nouns, the subjets of the sentences are the player characters, the playbooks. What about the verbs? Aren't they the moves?
Rules for apocalypse word are ways to regulate conversation.
Couldn't we postulate/imagine/believe that, designing a narrativist color first game, uses grammatical rules rather than mathematical and statistical ones?