I think you misunderstood my point — The reason I distinguished between blockchain-the-data-structure and blockchain-the-trustless-consensus-protocol is precise

I think you misunderstood my point — The reason I distinguished between blockchain-the-data-structure and blockchain-the-trustless-consensus-protocol is precisely because the word used to mean specifically the former but got coopted to refer to the latter. The blockchain data structure has been around for decades, and a Merkle tree is precisely the tree analogue to a blockchain's linked list. Trustlessness is a property of Nakamoto consensus, not of the blockchain data structure, but the combination of the two (or something that bears passing resemblance to that combination) is what usually gets called a "blockchain". Unfortunately this usage of the word is borderline useless because people keep loosening the requirements of the system so as to allow their harebrained setups to count as a "blockchain".