Whenever I hear or read the phrase "bitcoin client", I assume the person is talking about a full node. Perhaps that's just a left over artifact in my head from previously referring to Bitcoin Core as the Satoshi Client.

I do take your point, though. I see the wiki also uses the terms "thick" and "thin" clients to refer to full nodes and non full node wallets respectively, although that's not a term I've ever seen used elsewhere. I do think it is less confusing for everyone not to refer to non full nodes as clients at all though, and just refer to them as wallets, since that's what they are.