(Image from video - What is General Relativity? by ScienceClic)
It seems like we might be missing something ever since Einstein's General Relativity showed that gravity doesn't work the way Newton thought it did. While we all learn about gravity as a "force" in physics class, physicists tell us that gravity isn't actually a real force. Instead, what is really happening is mass is warping space-time and while it appears gravity is accelerating masses towards the center it is is merely a pseudo force - a la the magnetic force or the centrifugal force.
If the world was quicker to accept Einstein's theory we should have simply changed the way we talk about gravity. We should have said, "no, actually gravity is not "pulling" things down, gravity is actually warping space and time near mass and the resulting downward vector is an simply an emergent pseudo force. Then perhaps we could have a called Newton's "old gravity" something cool like the "captivating" or "alluring" pseudo force.
Unfortunately, it seems like most physicists are fine letting the Newtonian concept of gravity keep the name "gravity" and just calling this real space-time warping force "mass", or worse - not even naming it at all. It seems silly to not have a name for something so fundamentally important to the universe. Mass already has other very similar meanings, and the space-time warping force should really have it's own name.
I humbly propose a few: My favorite is the "exigency force", exigency means essential but also urgent conveying the existential nature of the force and also including a time factor. The runner is the "proclivity force", proclivity means to have a predisposition toward but also includes "clivity" which is a root word for acclivity and declivity which mean an "upward slope" and "downward slope" respectively. My third place entry is the "clinare force" which is a Latin word that means "to bend" and is the root of incline and decline.
Do you have a good name for the force mass exerts to warp space-time?
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