The current ambition to achieve a 10‐cm marine geoid focuses attention on the interdisciplinary problem of relating oceanographic to geodetic measurements, and on the apparent conflict between them along the United States’ coasts. The concepts underlying the comparisons in this conflict are analyzed, and shown to leave a possibility of diffusing the deadlock by more precise reformulations. Concepts which have been equated in practical applications under less stringent accuracy requirements need to be refined and related more precisely through interdisciplinary efforts. An example is given of a geodetic utilization of density differences in the ocean, akin to but not the same as the idea of steric leveling, in order to highlight the similarity and dissimilarity between some geodetic and oceanographic ideas.