But I'll try to provide some insight into the argument specifically regarding master and slave used together.

> How do terms become trivial when used in separate contexts? They are simply descriptive terms.

This is where I think you are incorrect. Master and slave are not simply descriptive terms. Pretty obviously, they are an analogy, just like, for example, male and female plugs. The point of analogies is that they use existing relationships to describe new relationships, so that understanding the new relationships is easier.

So I think the issue for some people is that in master/slave architectures, the master node neither brutally beats the slave nodes nor justifies its power through a theory of racial superiority. Maybe a more accurate analogy would be that one node is the leader and the others are the followers. Maybe we should only use the master/slave in situations which are actually comparable to the historic instances of chattel slavery. Plus, an updated analogy can better serve the purpose of describing relationships. In the context of databases, for example, primary/replica or master/replica are IMO both much better analogies than master/slave.

Sure you can argue they are simply descriptive terms. But if that's the case, why did engineers choose existing terms in the first place?