The point is that what constitutes a "system" is not well defined and/or there are multiple conflicting definitions. I was sad to see rust billing itself as a systems language so prominently, given that it doesn't really mean anything.

It's a simple term that, in Rust's case, encompasses all of "bare metal; zero-cost abstractions; no runtime; all language primitives map to simple hardware instructions". I don't see any better word for it. Do you?

That sounds like most of what people mean when they say a low level language, though I admit that the term comes with its own baggage about the simplicity of the language (which doesn't apply to rust).

I guess I think the sentence you wrote above is just a lot more clear than calling it a systems language and hoping people know what you mean.