You mean opportunity cost, right, not economic cost?
Does employing a euphemism such as opportunity cost make your loss any less real? Not at all. To the contrary, the propensity of options players (including several on this board) to play these kinds of words games is additional evidence of the degree to which options players are willing to delude themselves into thinking that their machinations are cleverly plucking value out of thin air.
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated in any area of human knowledge!”