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Starship can fly to orbit, it's just not cheaper than a reusable falcon 9 that way

Starship has only flown 11 times. I suspect it's more cost effective than the Falcon 9 was when it had 11 launches, long before any reuse.

Counting all those explosions as "flown" is pretty charitable.

It's a technical rocketry term that encompasses all attempted flights, successful or otherwise.

Your confusion stems from trying to use a different definition of the word when reading. Context clues are your friend here :)