Yes, they've used this terminology for a while, even the recent technical paper on this effort was titled "Oxidizing OCaml with Modal Memory Management", though

Yes, they've used this terminology for a while, even the recent technical paper on this effort was titled "Oxidizing OCaml with Modal Memory Management", though the word "oxidize" itself is never actually referenced or defined in the paper. A bit strange, I agree, though it's kind of catchy I admit.