> We might not have had this confusion if some other language were the lingua franca of computing.

Interestingly enough, I can confirm as a native speaker of one such language (🇸🇮Slovene), that outside of discrete mathematics and tech, the words are often used interchangeably. This suggest that the lack of a word in English isn't the cause but the effect. The distinction was likely not necessary before the modern era, so old (==all) languages never created/adopted proper terminology.