Well, BigPinkLad, you are right in the common use of the word, but that was coined in the days before physics started looking at the possibility of multiple things that had commonly been called the "universe." There are a lot of things that just can't be described using terminology from the old fashioned three dimensional world that can be described exceptionally well mathematically, but not in the every day language of dictionaries. So physicists talk to non physics people in a common language that both recognize is inaccurate.

But then, the world would probably be a real mess if everyone was a physicist!