R. David Murray added the comment:

In unix parlance, they are arguments and options (or, sometimes, flags).  And 
then required or not required.  So, argparse follows unix precedent here, 
except that it calls them "optional arguments", because everything is added via 
add_argument.  Which is why I suggested changing the label to just 'options'.  
But I could see using 'switches' instead, that's less ambiguous, and is the 
term used on Windows (albeit with a different standard syntax).  However, every 
unix man page uses the term 'options'.

I definitely think 'keywords' is not a good idea.  That's crossing the streams 
(python parlance versus shell parlance).  argparse is building a bridge to the 
shell world, and should use its terminology for the bits of shell stuff it is 
implementing...most especially in the default help display.

Note that, reading the issue history, the argparse maintainer is urging a doc 
change only (how to fix the help if you run into this issue), not a behavior 
change.

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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9694>
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