> This is what a relation is: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/21677/relation"Relation is sometimes used to refer to a table in a relational database" – True, but a relation is any set of tuples. Joining multiple tables together also produces a relation. It's not just tables. It's the more abstract concept of rows and columns, basically.
But, as noted earlier, SQL actually deviates from the relational model here. It doesn't actually operate on sets. This is where you find a lot of the gotchas it is famous for. Something like QUEL, which Postgres used instead of SQL for the first 10 years of its life, is closer to Codd's original model. It actually has relations.
I expect that deviation is why we're having trouble communicating here. As SQL isn't actually relational, calling them relations is technically a misnomer. While I appreciate the purity bent you say you're off on, I have indicated multiple times that I use relation with acknowledgement of SQL's deviation from the term in its purest sense. Yes, again, SQL relations aren't truly relations, but for the sake of ORM they serve the same purpose.
> Most ORMs intrinsically tie "query building" and the orm together without even referencing the term query builder.
Such as? All of the ORMs with query builders I'm familiar with are like "You an use our query DSL and you can even write raw SQL!". They present a clear separation between the ORM and the query building phases. If they were tightly coupled in those toolkits, they wouldn't be able to enable you to use raw SQL queries.