EDIT: Added soft- to the title, since it was pissing people off. Maybe Iβm still wrong. Idk, itβs just a meme.
Soft bricking always meant the os failed but you still have a bootloader. A fully bricked phone has no bootloader and is the typical definition.
This was an incredibly common issue back in the day. Some times you could even have the appearance of no bootloader but still be able to get it back to a usable state. You thanked the gods if that happened.