This writing exists so I don't have to define what I mean by the word "god" everytime I write something dealing with the gods. God is a word that's thrown around quite a bit in discussions of religion and spirituality, but it's a word with different meaning for different people. Much like the word worship, god's connotative meaning has been changed significantly by monotheistic faiths. Online belief quizzes such as Beliefnet's Belief-O-Matic are horribly slanted towards a monotheistic perspective, and many atheists seem to believe that disproving the existence of an all-good, omnipotent being somehow disproves the existence of all deities. It's all rather annoying. In large part because the JCI folks say their main god is infinite and omnipotent, in many people's minds the word god means "an infinite, almighty being". This confusion is only added to by many if not most Christians' rather disrespectful habit of calling their main deity God. He has a number of names- El, Jesus, and Yahweh being some of the better known ones. Calling him "God" is rather like me calling my partner "Woman" or my nephew "Boy". It's accurate, but it's not particularly nice.
A look at the etymology of the word god demonstrates that there is a much broader meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the root, though disputed, is likely one of two Sanskrit words, one meaning "that which is invoked" and the other meaning "that which receives sacrifice." The Online Etymology Dictionary gives a similar etymology, adding the possibility of a third root meaning "to pour, or to pour a libation." Throughout human existence, the gods have been those beings who have received worship, who have been given gifts and asked aid of, and who have been recognized as something beyond or not-quite human. When I speak or write of a god, it is often this sense of the meaning that I am using, especially in a more specific pre-Christian Germanic sense in which the gods are those powers who can and often do give luck to their worshippers, especially the Æsir and the Vanir, but also certain of the Álfar, the Disir, and some of the Jötnar (most notably Skaði). Personally, I don't make a serious distinction between the Æsir and the Vanir, since those of the Vanir who are best known are those who were more-or-less adopted into the Æsir after coming to Asgard as hostages. Similarly, many of those Jötnar who could be considered gods, such as Skaði, I would consider to be Æsir as well (well, Asynjur, really, I suppose) for similar reasons.