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The current French system is probably about as good as any system can hope to be in this age. Today, a ships capabilities can vary so much that it's hard to come up with proper definitions. In the past, this wasn't a problem.

In the Age of Sail, a vessel was easily categorised by the number of masts and the type of rig, and the number of guns. Weight of guns and combination of guns was not often considered because when you're within "half pistol shot" of the enemy, a gun is a gun is a gun! Thus, every ship rigged vessel that was too small to be a ship-of-the-line was a frigate by default. Everything smaller usually had a different rig, which made it a sloop or a brig or a barque or whatever.

Today, we no longer have ships-of-the-line so, in Age of Sail terms, every frontline warship is equivalent to a frigate. If that's the case, the word frigate must simply mean warship!

During the late 19th, early 20th centuries, ships could still be easily identified by their equipment. You could guess the size and calibre of a gun from a distance, you could estimate the hull size of a ship and count the funnels and could even tell how heavily armoured it might be from the length to beam ratio and how fast it was moving.

Today, we have complicated things like electronics. You can't accurately judge how capable a ship is in terms of sensors and electronics just by looking at the masts, just like you can't accurately judge how powerful a computer is by looking at the box and the keyboard. Just because a ship has a certain type of mast and a certain type of emitter, it doesn't mean that all the computer equipment is installed, or that all the best software is being used. There are dozens of different Combat Data Systems that can be interfaced with just as many different sensor systems. This is making things very complicated!

Also, we now have dozens of weapons that all fall into the same category, but are all very different. For example, there are several different point defence missile systems on the market, all with different capabilities, all with different warheads, different effective ranges and often using different sensors, but all claiming to do the same job! Very confusing. But to the naked eye, all you see is some kind of light weight missile launcher mounted on the deck. How can you tell whether it's a Barak or a Seawolf or an Umkhonto? Only nerds like us who know the difference can tell, but we can only spot the difference at close range! When you get that close, you may as well forget the missiles and shoot each other with hand guns!

In general, the USN says that frigates are smaller than destroyers, which are smaller than cruisers, which are smaller than aircraft carriers. In that sense, you could say that "smaller" actually refers to how important the ship is in the line of battle, rather than it's physical size. Cruisers tend to have better command facilities than destroyers which makes them higher value assets, even though the Arleigh Burke is as big as many WWII cruisers!

In general, the RN says that frigates hunt submarines and destroyers shoot down aircraft. This allows the Type 22 frigates to be bigger than the Type 42 destroyers without causing a problem, but causes confusion when compared to navies like the USN.

In general, the Russians say whatever they want. They've had funny things called aviation cruisers and destroyers that shoot down aircraft and hunt submarines and every other possible combination.

In general, the French say that everything that is painted grey and belongs to the Navy (and isn't an amphib or a carrier or a supply ship) is a frigate (for frigate, read "warship"). The French say that the only meaningful difference is the particular purpose of each frigate, and this purpose defines which equipment is fitted. This purpose is indicated using an acronym. It seems to work.

Also recall that frigates used to be known as "cruizers" because they cruised. Cruising was a particular type of mission. Of course, during the mid-19th century, dozens of different vessel types were grouped together under the title cruizer, which really just described a mission or assignment, not the type of ship. This was mostly because it was a time of change and no one knew what kind of ship they'd be building in the future. Technology was advancing all the time and old style ships of the line could often find themselves relegated to a cruiser role because they had greater endurance than a modern coal-fired ship.

But even today, every ship that is painted grey goes cruising, so they're all still cruizers, so why don't we just call every warship a cruiser?

The real reason we care about frigates, destroyers, carriers, battleships etc. is just public relations. It sounds better in the news to say that our great and powerful nation has sent a fleet of frigates to fight the enemy. It doesn't sound as good when you say that we've sent a fleet of corvettes, and journalists would just refuse to call something an AAW warship or an ASW warship because they don't like acronyms and frigate, destroyer and cruiser sound much better!

First, let's establish our baseline. Ship-rigged vessels are sea-going vessels with a bowsprit and three masts, all of which carry square sails.

Regarding the italic parts: I concede the point. It was sloppy writing but I was generalising in support of my main point rather than arguing exact definitions (I've saved that for my comments below ;-)

Regarding the underlined parts: proper sloops cannot by definition be ship-rigged, having only a single mast. The original sloop has a single mast with a fore-and-aft rig and, depending on which side of the pond you're on, either one or two head sails. With two head sails, it's a cutter. However, sloops often cause confusion because early 19th century versions started to carry brig and ship rigs. There was the ship-sloop with three masts and the brig-sloop with two. So, sloops were not usually ship-rigged as this implies that ship or brig-rigged sloops were more common. Some sloops were eventually ship-rigged, but sloops began life as single masted, fore-and-aft rigged vessels and this remains the baseline definition of a sloop.

Corvettes are not the French word for sloop and are not some variant on sloops, so there isn't much point in comparing them, unless you're comparing them with the ship-sloops, of course! Corvettes had three masts and square sails - a ship rig - and a single flush deck.

From 'The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea' (1988) page 207...
Corvette, a flush-decked warship of the 17th - 18th centuries with a single tier of guns, smaller than a frigate but ship-rigged on three masts.