This International Standard specifies terms defined in standards that fall under the scope of technical committee TC 36: Insulators. It covers terms that can be found in IEC 60050‑471 as well as terms not appropriate for inclusion in IEC 60050‑471 but used widely in the standards of IEC TC 36.

IEC 60050‑471 is not intended to cover all the terms used in the various IEC standards but provides rather a general purpose vocabulary giving the basic terms and reference terms to be used by all technical committees. This glossary is intended to harmonize terms not listed in IEC 60050‑471 but used in the publications of committee TC 36.