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Is spilling really a good name for this type of system.
Say we have various time buckets
Bronstein Delay Clocks don't carry your surplus time from one bucket to the next. Fischer Delay Clocks do carry over your surplus time from one bucket to the next.
One is supposed to imagine the Bronstein Time Spilling onto the floor. One could equally imagine the Fischer Time Spilling into the next bucket.
I would prefer Permeable and Non Permeable to be used instead.
It is understood that "proper" naming of events makes it more mathematically nomenclature correct. However; permiable and non-permiable, although valid decriptive terms, are poor choices to use when explaining to people who don't use permiable or non-permiable in everyday life. Spilling is a term which allows the listener to conjure imagery of the event being described (as you yourself have explained). If the less scientific name has he exact same meaning, isn't it worthwile to use it? There is plenty of scientific terminology that sounds strange if it weren't for the fact that it was used in an official paper. (e.g: Monte Carlo method... are we all going to start losing our money at a casino?) But do you see how quickly your mind grasps the concept using this form of mental association?
I agree that a superflous number of words used to say the same thing can be a real pain when making/using a system of standard terminology. Just please bear in mind that your preferred words (which have just as much credability) can come across as cold and indifferent to people who find this subject hard to understand, or those who are not used to it.
That's all well and good, but it's sort of nice to have a clear term. I would have expected spilling and non-spilling to be used in the exact opposite sense, myself.
How about Lossy and Lossless? These are used in image compression, where there are "lossy" ways to limit the size of an image (JPEG is lossy) and "lossless" ways to limit that size (PNG is lossless).
I think those are pretty descriptive of what happens, and do not have the same potential for confusion (the "Spilling over into the next bucket" confusion)