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What is an "exact solution" to a PDE?

Wolfram MathWorld says

As used in physics, the term “exact” generally refers to a solution that captures the entire physics and mathematics of a problem as opposed to one that is approximate, perturbative, etc. Exact solutions therefore need not be closed-form.

But Terry Tao seems to take "exact solution" to mean a closed form solution.

Is one of these very standard?  Or does usage just vary on this point?

Colin McLarty
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