I'm looking for a simple term or phrase (friendly for laypeople) for the following idea about concepts.
Suppose you have a goal to hammer a nail into a piece of wood. In this instant, you have a concept of "hammer" that fits your goal. The world is filled with instances of hammers are part of that concept and can meet that goal.
Unfortunately, there are no tools nearby. In desperation, you grab a nearby can of soup and pound the nail in with it.
Now, most of the time, you do not consider a can of soup to be part of your mental concept of "hammer." But in this particular situation, you do. In fact, the can of soup is the best instance of "hammer" that meets your goal in this situation.
In the moment, you have constructed a concept "hammer" that has "can of soup" as its ideal instance (sort of like a prototype). The official term for this is "situated conceptualization," coined by Larry Barsalou, but with 11 syllables it's unwieldy for discussing with laypeople.
This is for a document that needs to use the term over and over, so it should be sort, simple, and memorable. Any suggestions?