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This rather assumes devaluation is something active which is done by a government, which may be how a goverment presents it to the public. In reality it is something which is forced on a government by powers outside its control - in other words it is passive,not active.
I would argue it's the other way round. Devaluation is when a government decides that it is going to make its currency weaker and can do that by dictat (in theory) because it enforces a fixed exchange rate with foreign currency, a strategy which is invariably very effective at producing a flourishing black market in currency dealing because the official rate is almost inevitably different to the real rate.
In circumstances where a government doesn't set the exchange rate (i.e. most countries these days, but not all - China for example) the government can do things which have the effect of strengthening or weakening their currency but that's a secondary effect rather than a devaluation per se.
Like you say, primarily a linguistic distinction. Probably only really relevant to economists, and I'm not one.
Brommers-
I'm not an economist either, but for what it's worth this is how I understand what happens in a normal devaluation (if there is such a thing).
Speculators (may be indivduals or goverments) spot a weak currency - they sell that currency and the central bank for that currency has to buy what they are offered with foreign currency.
Eventually they run out and then the goverment has no option but to devalue. Naturally they will try to cover their backs by claiming that the devaluation will be brilliant for industry, but the fact is they've been stuffed. This usually means electoral defeat - soon.The Attlee government devalued in 1949, just survived the 1950 election but were mortally wounded and lost in 1951. Wilson was probably wrong in failing to devalue immediately after being elected in 1964 (when he could have blamed it on the Tories), devalued in 1966 and hobbled on until 1970 when he hoped in vain that a World Cup victory would save his bacon.
More recently the 1992 Lamont fiasco was a prelude to T. Blair's landslide.Sadly, this process has not yet worked through with the 2016 version.
clubman
Yes, Danstuff is exactly correct. The sterling/euro rate was 15.81% worse (for us) at the end of 2016 compared with the beginning of the year (I've just looked it up)
TW nicely proves my point - they got away with it! The public didn't realise they'd lost a lost of their money.
Danstuff's post raises an interesting linguistic point : "you can't devalue a freely tradeable currency". This rather assumes devaluation is something active which is done by a government, which may be how a goverment presents it to the public. In reality it is something which is forced on a government by powers outside its control - in other words it is passive,not active.