Whoa, whoa, I’m not making this out to be like an imperialism thing. I’m not interested in what people ought to do.

The link I gave, a comment in there gives examples of papers where the term being used to mean different things. So, this ambiguity is either something you just have to contend with (people using the term wrong), or you just don’t read from those people. It’s fine. Nobody is coming for you, I promise.

If I were in your class and you said “the whole numbers” but meant the negatives too, that’d probably give me pause (dumb American), but I have such herculean powers of intuition that I probably wouldn’t even ask you a question about it.