Unicode uses the term “character encoding form” or “character encoding scheme” for what is normally referred to or abbreviated as “character encoding” or “charset” (see e.g. RFC 8187), and uses “character encoding” or “coded character set” for the abstract assignment of natural numbers to the abstract characters in a character repertoire, which is more usually referred to as just “[coded] character set” (cf. also UCS = Unicode Character Set). This different use of terminology can cause confusion. The GP is correct that Unicode as a whole is not what is colloquially meant by “encoding”.