Climate change will likely lead to more regular and more severe drought events in the near future, with large impacts on agriculture, especially during long-lasting precipitation deficits or heat waves. This study focuses on agricultural droughts, which are generally defined as soil moisture deficits so severe, that vegetation is negatively impacted. However, during short soil moisture drought events, vegetation is not always negatively affected, and sometimes even thrives under increased solar input. Because of this duality in agricultural drought impacts, the use of the term agricultural droughts is a potential issue. Here we show that, in major European droughts over the past two decades, clear asynchronies did occur between soil moisture and vegetation anomalies. A wrong use of the term agricultural droughts could lead to misclassification of drought events and false drought alarms, and for that reason, a distinction is necessary between soil moisture and vegetation droughts.