diff --git a/client/src/lib/teamActivity.js b/client/src/lib/teamActivity.js
index 2d5c3b6..d0508b3 100644
--- a/client/src/lib/teamActivity.js
+++ b/client/src/lib/teamActivity.js
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ export function relativeTime(when, now = Date.now()) {
  * Distinct from `teamAdmin.freshnessOf`, which is worded for an operator
  * debugging a sync. A visitor needs one sentence about whether what they are
  * looking at is current, and specifically must never be shown an unconfirmed
- * empty projection as though it were a confirmed empty shard.
+ * empty projection as though it were a confirmed empty one.
  */
 export function freshnessNote(sync = {}, now = Date.now()) {
   // Nothing supplies Teams here, so there is nothing to be stale ABOUT. A
@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ export function freshnessNote(sync = {}, now = Date.now()) {
  * Group feed items into days, newest first, preserving order within a day (§4.3).
  *
  * Keyed by local calendar date rather than by a UTC slice: "yesterday" is a
- * property of where the reader is sitting, and a shard's evening raid landing at
+ * property of where the reader is sitting, and a game server's evening raid landing at
  * 00:30 UTC belongs on the day the players experienced it.
  */
 export function groupByDay(items = [], locale = undefined) {
diff --git a/client/src/lib/teamAdmin.js b/client/src/lib/teamAdmin.js
index 7c3c34f..fd7d6e7 100644
--- a/client/src/lib/teamAdmin.js
+++ b/client/src/lib/teamAdmin.js
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 //
 // Plain JS with tests, following lib/moduleAdmin.js. The reason it is worth
 // splitting here specifically: this screen's job is to tell an operator the
-// difference between "the shard has no Teams" and "core has not been able to ask
+// difference between "the game server has no Teams" and "core has not been able to ask
 // for two hours", and those two produce almost the same page. Getting that
 // wording right is logic, not markup.
 
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ export function freshnessOf(sync = {}) {
     return {
       tone: TONE.bad,
       label: 'Never synced',
-      detail: 'Core has never had an answer it could trust. What is shown below is not a confirmed empty shard.',
+      detail: 'Core has never had an answer it could trust. What is shown below does not confirm that the game server has no Teams.',
     }
   }
   if (sync.stale) {
diff --git a/client/src/routes/admin/views/TeamsAdmin.jsx b/client/src/routes/admin/views/TeamsAdmin.jsx
index ef8a8ff..00f9d8b 100644
--- a/client/src/routes/admin/views/TeamsAdmin.jsx
+++ b/client/src/routes/admin/views/TeamsAdmin.jsx
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ import TeamVoice from './TeamVoice.jsx'
 // Three panels, in the order an operator needs them:
 //
 //   1. **Sync state**, verbatim, including the last error. The screen's first job
-//      is to make "the shard has no Teams" and "core has not been able to ask for
+//      is to make "the game server has no Teams" and "core has not been able to ask for
 //      two hours" impossible to confuse — they render almost identically
 //      otherwise, and one is fine while the other is an outage.
 //   2. **The review queue** — Teams auto-hidden because their name matched the
diff --git a/client/test/teamActivity.test.js b/client/test/teamActivity.test.js
index d58cecb..0a1bed2 100644
--- a/client/test/teamActivity.test.js
+++ b/client/test/teamActivity.test.js
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ test('a deployment with no provider is not stale, it is uninvolved', () => {
   assert.equal(freshnessNote({ configured: false }, NOW), null)
 })
 
-test('never synced is a warning, and never reads as a confirmed empty shard', () => {
+test('never synced is a warning, and never reads as a confirmed empty roster', () => {
   const note = freshnessNote({ configured: true, lastSyncAt: null }, NOW)
   assert.equal(note.tone, 'warn')
   assert.match(note.text, /Not yet confirmed/)
diff --git a/client/test/teamAdmin.test.js b/client/test/teamAdmin.test.js
index b0e889a..f155c3d 100644
--- a/client/test/teamAdmin.test.js
+++ b/client/test/teamAdmin.test.js
@@ -21,13 +21,13 @@ test('no provider is idle, not a fault', () => {
   assert.match(f.label, /No Team provider/)
 })
 
-test('never synced is reported as never synced, not as an empty shard', () => {
+test('never synced is reported as never synced, not as a game server with no Teams', () => {
   // The failure this prevents: an empty projection core has never confirmed,
   // rendered as though the game genuinely has no Teams.
   const f = freshnessOf({ configured: true, lastSyncAt: null })
   assert.equal(f.tone, TONE.bad)
   assert.equal(f.label, 'Never synced')
-  assert.match(f.detail, /not a confirmed empty shard/)
+  assert.match(f.detail, /does not confirm that the game server has no Teams/)
 })
 
 test('stale says how old it is', () => {
diff --git a/server/src/model/teams/teams.model.js b/server/src/model/teams/teams.model.js
index 4d1be52..38e9eaa 100644
--- a/server/src/model/teams/teams.model.js
+++ b/server/src/model/teams/teams.model.js
@@ -135,7 +135,7 @@ async function syncStatus() {
     configured: true,
     lastSyncAt,
     // Never synced at all is stale: a page must not present an empty projection
-    // as a confirmed empty shard.
+    // as a confirmed empty one.
     stale: ageS > intervalS * STALE_INTERVALS,
     consecutiveFailures: state ? state.consecutive_failures : 0,
   }