Originally, "the device is bricked" meant that the device was about as useful as a brick, i.e. it had no useful functionality left couldn't be recovered at all. However, as the parent points out, it's been increasingly misused.
I kinda like "cold bricked" personally.
- soft: need some sysadmin mojo, USB adb etc.
- hard: can be fixed with soldering, physical repair of sorts.
- cold: will never again work even if you're Louis Rossman (maybe as a ship of theseus). Think CPU fried.