We should be consistent when talking about evaluating a schema and an instance together. This is sometimes discussed as being "runtime", which I think is fairly clear although maybe should be called out in the intro material.

Otherwise, I often use "evaluate against" or "validate against", but whether it's "schema evaluated against an instance' or "instance validated against a schema", etc. is pretty random. It probably roughly correlates with whether I was primarily talking about the instance or schema, but maybe not even that.

@ssilverman this is one of several wording issues that could use a meticulous eye. And for that matter, an answer to the question of why it goes one way or the other, even if that's just "we flipped a coin and decided it works this way."

From a user perspective, you're using the schema to evaluate / validate the instance. So the instance is or is not valid (evaluated?) against the schema.

Within the spec, we talk about loading schemas (load time) and evaluating them with/against an instance (runtime). This is more about the implementation process of doing the things the schema keywords indicate.

It's a bit of a vague mess with different bits written from different perspectives, and it's been low-level bugging me for a while.