The Node-red documentation, docs - creating nodes - properties, lists reserved property names as all lowercase single letters and id, type, wires, inputs, and outputs. Although perhaps obvious, the list should also include names of node functions, including status, log, send, etc. Better, it would be helpful to log an error or warning to inform the creator of the folly of their choice.
In creating my first node, I inadvertently used status as a variable name. Everything worked fine until trying to reference the variable in the message handler, which led to an interesting debug adventure.