That's an... uncharitable interpretation of the phrase "semi-colon language". The comment made sense to me: it's not at all about semicolons, but the semicolon

That's an... uncharitable interpretation of the phrase "semi-colon language". The comment made sense to me: it's not at all about semicolons, but the semicolon isn't a bad marker to distinguish between language families. It's closely related to expression- vs statement-focused languages, which if you squint is similar to the distinction between imperative and functional languages. Though the latter distinction is less relevant here, I'm just using it to point out that semicolon syntax is suggestive of semantics, even if it is itself just a superficial bit of syntax. You are correctly describing the awareness of resource management as an important characteristic, but that resource management is heavily intertwined with how values flow through the language syntax, which brings us back to expressions vs statements.