I used to have the same intuition but also just recently started to learn about material sciences. They refer to 'ceramics' as a wide family of material that is

I used to have the same intuition but also just recently started to learn about material sciences. They refer to 'ceramics' as a wide family of material that is comparable to "metal" and "crystals" and the likes. These families are usually categorized by the type of atomic bonds found in them. Example, Wikipedia starts the article on "Ceramic" with: A ceramic is a non-metallic solid material comprising an inorganic compound of metal, non-metal or metalloid atoms primarily held in ionic and covalent bonds. At least, if your mental model was about ceramic vases and ornamental objects.