According to George E. Cawthon :
I was a bit sloppy in my terms using "ground" instead of
"grounded." The NEC has and probably still calls the wire
that goes which serves to replace the earth a "grounded"
wire. This grounded wire is white. Some (maybe a lot of)
people call it the neutral, but that's gives a false
impression since in AC since current flows both ways. The
wire that you call a safety ground is the "grounding" wire.
I don't have a current NEC so maybe these terms have
changed.

If you attach a 12/3 romex at the breaker box and a
receptacle at the other line, the grounded and the grounding
wire will be identical electrically identical since they are
both the same size and the same length. There is no
difference it how you hook appliance to the wires that is
different.

It is wrong and quite dangerous to use the grounding conductor
(ground wire) and the grounded conductor (neutral wire)
interchangeably. Yes, they are connected together in the panel
but that's irrelevant.

If it were okay to interchange them, there'd not be two of them.

For example: if you have the ground and neutral reversed in an outlet
and you have a wiring fault, a single hot-case short in a three prong appliance
can make every grounded metal surface on that circuit go live.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.