Funny that it didn't appear until about 10 years ago, though. Don't recall whether it was Suntour or Shimano that was the first to issue their own full group (probably before 1980), but from then until 2014 or so, no one had any trouble being understood when "group" was used.

I guess you'd probably have to use the clunky phrase "component group" the first time you mentioned it in an article, though, so I can see how that eventually got replaced by "groupset." So you're right.