In Mar 2008 issue of The Physics Teacher, John Jewett in “Energy and
the Confused Student III: Language” writes that
Romer claims that heat should not be used as a noun. While I agree
with the spirit of using the word heat correctly, I disagree that heat
is not a noun. Heat is indeed a noun, but it is the name of a process,
not the name of what is transferred.
Although this has been discussed in Phys-L before, it seems that there
is still no agreement on whether “Heat is a process” or “Heat is a
noun”. Hence, it could be better to write “Heat should be defined as a
process” or “Heat should be defined as a noun”. Actually, there are
also students who get very confused when they are taught that “Heat is
not a noun”.