well, I am with magwitch. I suppose I will wind up putting down the word that defines the objects, but it really is not obvious that that is what the setter expects.
The other, commoner, word has a secondary meaning, which is to use such objects so as to produce their output in a particular way. That, and that it is an anagram of the definition, conserve my doubt.
magwitch probably agrees with me that a "theme word" to be deduced would normally have the same status as a puzzle's title, and so would not usually be as obscure as the one we are contemplating.
And hey I don't mean to be combative, I just want to be comfy with the answer :-)