I've seen far to many arguments end up with people bickering about concise definitions. It's why I have a bad habit of avoiding discussions with certain people that might end up that way.
No, I have not suffered clinical depression, but yes I have been depressed. Clinical depression is not something to be taken lightly, and most of us who haven't experienced it tend to underestimate it and think they're had it just as bad. We have no idea what it's really like.
That said, all my respect to all your depressed friends and all of mine, but I'll use the word depression to describe my feelings when I want too. The term has been snatched up to mean a very specific extreme case of what it defines, and now it seems it's offensive to the 'seriously depressed' to use the word for lighter cases.
Returning to an arbitrary number system (we all love numerical scales!), maybe only those at a 650+ point score are clinically or seriously depressed, but I was depressed when my dog died, I was depressed when a girl I was crushing on hooked up with someone else, and I get depressed if I think too much about world affairs. But I've never been to a point where I need meds or counseling. Or so I like to think...
I hereby reclaim the term 'depression' from the exclusive use of the psychologists, psychiatrists, and the very depressed, and return it to the hands of us, the people who feel down from time to time.