Similar thing happened to “roguelike”. First it meant low-graphic gameplay/storytelling focused RPGs. Then people added “permadeath” to the defining features. Then it just meant permadeath, or “hard”, or “has multi-run progression”. Now people call Balatro a roguelike. People tried to adopt roguelite, but 1. sounds too similar, and 2. language will be used how it is understood, not how some of us want it to.

I don’t think this is the right history of the term. Old roguelikes were games that were similar to Rogue: procedurally generated permadeath dungeon crawlers with little or no progression between runs that were as unforgiving as old editions of D&D. Then you had a bit more breadth to it with things like Dwarf Fortress falling under the label despite not being a D&Desque dungeon crawler at all. “Roguelites” then emerged as games trying to copy the procedurally generated permadeath dungeon crawler archetype but with some sort of meta progression to make the player stronger between runs, but the term merged back into “roguelike” for basically the reasons you gave.

Now it’s like a vague category of short procgen runs with no safety net (meaning you have to restart a run if you ever fail), usually with some kind of meta progression between runs, although what a “run” is in context can vary a lot between games.