Does lithium-6 "decay" when hit by a neutron? I am talking about the nuclear reaction
$$
^6\text{Li} + n \rightarrow\ ^4\text{He} +\ ^3\text{H} + 4.78\text{MeV}
$$
A neutron hits a lithium-6 nucleus and together they form an alpha and triton particle. Is it valid to say that the lithium nucleus "decays" when hit by a neutron? Is there any other verb which better describes the change of the lithium nucleus?
I am interested in the correct terminology.
 A: A ground state $^7\mathrm{Li}$ nucleus is stable, so this reaction is either direct or involves a unstable, intermediate, excited state of the lithium-7 nucleus.
If you are studying that excited state1 then you consider this reaction as
$$ ^6\mathrm{Li} + n \longrightarrow 
\, ^7\mathrm{Li}^* \longrightarrow 
\, ^4\mathrm{He} + ^3\!\mathrm{H} + \text{4.78 MeV} \,, $$
and would definitely refer to the intermediate state's eventual breakup as "fission" or "decay". 
That said, the reference I used to look up the properties of lithium-7 doesn't explicitly list an excited state for the system and it does list long-lived meta-stable states of other isotopes. From this I conclude that this is probably a very short-lived state which means that for most purposes you can treat the reaction as direct in which case it would not be appropriate to talk of "decay".

1 This is the kind of thing that old school nuclear physicists dd a lot. Much of the information on $^{13}\mathrm{C}(\alpha,n)^{16}\mathrm{O}$ is coached in terms of the properties of the $^{17}\mathrm{O}$ intermediate state.
A: Decays happen to individual nuclei ( particles). When more than one nucleus(particle) are involved it is called an "interaction". In this case neutron Li scattering 
Neutron capture   by a nucleus is a possibility, in this case there is an intermediate nucleus formed  , which can then decay.
A: The process by which the lithium becomes fissile due to neutron capture is called neutron activation. The subsequent decay is simply a fission reaction.
There seems to be a precedent on various sites for such a process to be called a 'neutron capture induced fission reaction', although most of the Google results for the term refer to the more usual fission of uranium and other heavy nuclei.
A: What happens depends on the energy of the neutron. At lower energy, it can simply merge with the $^6$L to form $^7$L. At a higher energy it can cause the $^6$L to fission, and at even higher energy it can break the $^6$L into pieces (spallation). This last mechanism is being studied for neutron induced fission, where the neutrons produced by high energy particles (protons, neutrons, deuterons) blast neutrons out of the lithium to stimulated fission events in Uranium, etc.
