is it acceptable to put questions of the type "what does ... mean?" or "what is ...?" on MathOverflow.  For example?

* what is the moduli space of higgs bundles?
* what is a Picard-Viessot extension?
* what is a Borel subgroup?  
* what is the Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle?  
* ...
* etc

There are many examples of literature where the jargon is so specific I have no idea what they are talking about.  Perhaps it's time to contact the author?