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You're right, of course, but this is not a tech site. In this case, I think it's reasonable to use the more familiar term. It's a bit like Lisp; it's not technically a language, but everyone knows what you mean.

[edit]Or seanstickle could be right. COBOL was invented before my mother was even born, so this isn't exactly my area of expertise. ;)

When you hear COBOL and Assembler in the same sentence, you should (in addition to releasing the safety on your browning) presume 360/370/zOS.

Turns out my brother-in-law is well versed in all the languages, as he works on a key cross-platform IBM product. He also is a whiz with reading core dumps.

In the context of COBOL, the natural assumption would be mainframe Assembler of the S/390 variety. Which is a distinct language, not the class of assembly programming.