"Theory" in science means tested framework, not casual guess

Dawkins opens by attacking a common source of public confusion: the word "theory" carries a much weaker meaning in everyday speech, where it can mean an unverified hunch, than it does in scientific usage, where it refers to an explanatory framework that has survived repeated, rigorous attempts at falsification. Germ theory, atomic theory, and the theory of evolution all share this status — not tentative speculation but among the most thoroughly corroborated ideas humans have ever produced. He argues this linguistic slippage is regularly exploited, deliberately or not, by people who want to cast evolution as scientifically shaky simply because of the word attached to it. Clarifying this distinction, in his view, is a necessary first step before any evidence can be properly evaluated, because otherwise skeptics dismiss overwhelming evidence on semantic grounds alone. Takeaway: don't let a word's everyday meaning smuggle doubt into a claim that has actually been rigorously tested.