“Refugees.” “Guests.” “Evacuees.” “Internally displaced people.”

All of those terms have been used to describe the hordes of Americans cast away from their homes, towns, and cities in the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.

Symbolizing the political and racial repercussions of the Gulf Coast catastrophe, it’s a semantic confusion that has provoked a response from the president, enraged civil rights leaders, and put major newsrooms at odds with one another.

For some, the word “refugee” is loaded with racial undertones, conveys too sorry a fate for the victims, or simply doesn’t, in its dictionary definition, apply. For others, there’s just no better way to describe the horrific condition of the hurricane victims.

Those who object to using “refugees” include President Bush, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Al Sharpton, major relief agencies, and some major news outlets, such as the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, CNN, and NPR.

Mr. Bush, who has been heavily criticized for the federal government’s handling of emergency relief efforts, spoke out yesterday against the word’s widespread usage in the press.

“The people we’re talking about are not refugees,” the president said, according to the Associated Press. “They are Americans, and they need the help and love and compassion of our fellow citizens.”

Mr. Bush’s statement came after African-American civil rights leaders and politicians, particularly Rev. Jackson and Rev. Sharpton, voiced objections to what they see as a racially offensive term. Rev. Jackson, speaking Monday on CNN, told his interviewer, Lou Dobbs, it was “utterly distasteful” for the press to call the victims refugees. “In fact, they are citizens,” Rev. Jackson said.

On MSNBC, Rev. Sharpton rebuked the host Tucker Carlson for using the word, which Mr. Carlson called a “descriptive term.” The word, Rev. Sharpton said, “gives the inference that they are not home citizens, taxpaying citizens, that are a victim of a catastrophe.”

At the Astrodome in Houston, a temporary shelter for thousands of hurricane victims, volunteers are undergoing a six-minute sensitivity training conducted by the Red Cross, in which they are instructed to call the victims “guests.”

One of those guests, Clara Rita Barthelemy, 50, who fled her home in St. Bernard Parish and has been living in the Astrodome, said in a telephone interview that she expressed her anger at being called a “refugee” in newspapers and on television to Senator Clinton when the New York Democrat visited on Monday. “Why are they calling us refugees?” she said. “I’m an American. I’m not running to Russia. I’m not running to China. I’m a victim of a hurricane.”

While it may offend some, the word refugee accurately describes the condition of Americans who fled the hurricane and sought refuge in other cities and states, the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, Jesse Sheidlower, told The New York Sun.

“These people are Americans, of course they are. But they are in an extremely difficult situation,” Mr. Sheidlower said. “And calling them guests doesn’t change that. Calling them Americans doesn’t change that, either. They really do need a lot of help.”

Common usage of the word refugee, he said, is not necessarily restricted to situations in which people are politically persecuted or have crossed national borders, the way it is defined in international law under the U.N. 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

The second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary defines a refugee as “one who flees to a place of safety.” The second definition says it refers “especially” to “one who flees to a foreign power or country for safety.”

The executive editor of the Associated Press, Kathleen Carroll, said the wire service was sticking with refugee because it captures “the sweep and scope of the effects of this historic natural disaster on a vast number of our citizens.” The New York Times, too, has supported its use.

For some relief groups, the destructive toll of the hurricane has bent preconceived definitions. A spokeswoman for the American Refugee Committee, Therese Gales, said the proper official term to describe the hurricane victims is “internally displaced people.” Her agency, she said, has been using the word “evacuees.”

For the first time, the Minneapolis-based agency is assisting Americans in a humanitarian situation, she said. Indeed, the president of the group, Hugh Parmer, is serving as a senior adviser to Federal Emergency Management Agency and is drafting an intermediate phase response plan for relocating the hurricane victims.

“It’s very ironic,” Ms. Gales said.