Terminology can be quite subjective. For example, I can take the item that most people call an "apple" and use the word "basketball" for it instead. If I use the term consistently, I wouldn't be incorrect in using the terminology - I'd just using it in a way that would be confusing to anyone else not familiar with that convention. This makes for very ineffective communication, of course, which is why we tend to stick to group-accepted definitions.

So, like it or not, definitions of terms are a matter of consensus and accepted convention. I'd love to hear a professional military pilot's personal and arbitrary opinion on the matter, but in the meantime, I checked with my good friend google, to see what s/he has to say about this particular term and I found three websites that talked about the term with enough detail to express an opinion on the matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multirole_combat_aircraft <- scrim provided this link earlier - good read
http://www.answers.com/topic/military-aircraft#Multirole_combat_aircraft
http://www.diecastaircraftforum.com/archive/t-11653.html

In each of these three references, the term "multirole" is used to describe aircraft that can carry out multiple mission types (air-to-air, air-to-ground, reconnaissance, etc.), although not necessarily in the same mission. In fact, the term "swing role" is defined separately to describe an aircraft that performs multiple mission types in the same sortie, implying that the two terms are not synonymous. There are numerous other terms that get a bit more specific (fighter-bomber, strike fighter, etc.), but, again, some context and convention is required to accurately interpret what is meant by using the term in each instance that it's used.

These descriptions appear to be consistent with Frederf's interpretations, but everyone's welcome to have their own personal and arbitrary definition, of course. Common understanding of terminology can be critical in some situations ("When I said 'knife', I meant the scalpel, nurse, not this plastic knife from your Lunchables"), so painstaking and deliberate communication of conventions can be important, of course, but it can be unnecessarily tedious where it doesn't really matter.

I'm just going to sit back and watch while I sip on my basketball juice.

I'm reading this on my basketball tablet.

BeachAV8R

STOP IT! STOP IT NAU! Stop fooling me into thinking that there's news about the MiG-21 by nonsense about a term that is about as well defined as the word "rock". You're playing with my fragile emotions

Sorry, scrim!

No, you can't just take it back like that! Expect to hear from my lawyers, I'll be suing everyone who's written an OT post in this thread

Oh wait, now I'm doing it. It's a virus

Never find me going off topic.