I have seen a recent phenomenon since I returned to Morrowind. That would be people calling Tribunal and Bloodmoon DLCs. I wonder why they do this. When they were released, they were marketed and released as EXPANSIONS sold on a disk. You could not (and still cannot legally AFAIK) download them separately. Heck...the GOTY edition of Morrowind itself did not make it onto Steam until 2009, seven years after the initial release of Morrowind itself. Tribunal and Bloodmoon are not available as separate downloads on Steam. So why do people continue call these things DLCs? Has the term itself evolved or something? As someone who owns decade old physical disks, it bothers me to see these expansions called DLCs when they most obviously (to me at least) are not. Thoughts?

Yes, the term DLC has taken on the meaning of any addition or expansion because extra content is no longer offered on disc for new games. It seems annoying and inaccurate at first but it's just one part of a long series of terms being overtaken by events. This is how The Great War became WW1 and how regular watches with hands became anolog watches. Occasionally you just have to sigh and move on. (especially if you're as old as I am )

I guess people just find it easier to call everything but the main game DLC, whether it′s an expansion or actual DLC. I tend to lean towards separating the two though.

I was going to say something like this, but fragonard beat me to it, and said it better than I would. It's just what all the kids are saying these days!

They are all "plugins' in my books, not DLC!

That's how Morrowind originally called them, and being an old school Morrowind fanatic, I call everything a plugin, from Morrowind to Skyrim and the Fallout series.

I highly have to agree with you on this, Expansions are only on morrowind, I wish for oblivion knights of the nine and shivering isle was a expansion, and for skyrim I wish dawnguard and dragonborn were expansions. All in general I do call each big dlc for each new tes game expansions in my own opinion, I have one of the oldest versions of morrowind and oblivion.

I guess there are many "casuals" (like me) who never knew how to distinguish DLCs from plugins from add-ons from expansions... And then the "false" usage of the word just sticked. Also because it's handier and easier to write than expansion; it takes less energy. That's how languages evolve anyway, as also demonstrated above on fragonard's post. This shortening of the words and use of abbreviations in particular has completely exploded in English (and other languages) during last few decades, and the languages likely change way more quickly than they ever have in the history of mankind.

A lot of the people on the forums are young. Therefore they weren't around when additional content for games was released as a physical disc.
They just assume any extra stuff is DLC, so it's become an umbrella term.

The little add-ons are called that, but Tribunal and Bloodmoon were sold as "expansions." That's what all game companies called them 10 years ago.