I think you're mixing up other Lisps with Elisp. In this particular thread I'm specifically talking about Elisp, even though, in retrospect, I should've been more explicit about it and not dropped the 'E'.

AFAIK, Elisp is an interpreted language by design and always has the ability to evaluate s-expressions directly at runtime, there's no compiler-only implementation of Elisp. There's native compilation introduced in Emacs 28, but it just adds a layer of optimization, the interpreter still exists and can evaluate s-expressions directly, it doesn't turn Elisp into a "compiler-only" implementation.

But yes, there are other Lisps that compile code to machine lang, without an interpreter.

Good catch and a fine note, thank you!