And for even longer than that, it was a term describing the technique of keeping a tree-like structure that would gather updates so you could eventually update the actual DOM all in one go because updating the DOM piecemeal was slow.
The term was popularized long before "web components" was a thing, and in fact, that's where they got the name.
The term was popularized long before "web components" was a thing, and in fact, that's where they got the name.