...do they still use the phrase "digital intermediate"?

In the old days - well, circa 2000 - they would shoot something on film, and if the image needed to be manipulated in a non-photochemical way, it would be scanned into a digital file, before being transferred back onto film prints (the format in which it would reach theatres). This digital file was the digital intermediate - it came sandwiched, so to speak, between two bits of film.

But nowadays, with films that are digital all the way - digitally shot, digitally projected, digital at every point in between - they still refer to a "digital intermediate". Why? And does the phrase still mean something precise, or does it mean whatever you want it to mean?

Well it's between the source media and the final product, but it's likely just become a term that's stuck despite the changes. A well-known director recently complained about the dailies "telecine" on a project I was involved with, but it was shot with a Red Epic.

And that's already the answer. The intermediate is the result of post production. Might be film, might be digital. You got to give it some name, don't you.

I think they just got used to the word and there isn't really a reason to change it because technically it's still indeed a digital intermediate.

What I don't understand is how they did, back in the old days, retain the film quality if they went through a digital intermediate ? Digital can't replicate analog information exactly. So using that intermediate would destroy the whole point of using film in the first place. It would give the same final result as just shooting in 4K or something.

Is there something I'm missing ?

But nowadays, with films that are digital all the way - digitally shot, digitally projected, digital at every point in between - they still refer to a "digital intermediate"

Even a small movie like Whiplash had a film print for projection in some country. I really doubt that their is big movie with international release that get digital all the way.

For your question the wikipedia page talk a bit about it:

Although originally used to describe a process that started with film scanning and ended with film recording, digital intermediate is also used to describe color correction and color grading and even final mastering when a digital camera is used as the image source and/or when the final movie is not output to film. This is due to recent advances in digital cinematography and digital projection technologies that strive to match film origination and film projection.

Probably that they just kept the name.

Is it saying that everything between shooting and projection gets to be called "digital intermediate"?

From what I understand it is more related to what they do to the digital film format that replace traditional chemical development and modification to a film.

I guess that for someone, what you have from the raw camera file and what you give to someone like an editor that does not know how to manipulate it feel like some sort of intermediate.

The precision that it is digital will probably disappear if one day they really never start from film or end on film, but that is far from the case right now, and it is natural to keep the same name for both case, the guy job (feature colorist) is not that different if he start from a film scan or an alexia RAW files apparently.

But yeah I understand what you mean by that, the word seem to use for the file themselves, the process involve and so on.

The DI is the files that the processing is performed on.

Historically, before Digital Intermediates were used, film was digitized in a low resolution format and those files could be edited using NLE software, to produce an Edit Decision List from which the interpositive was cut.

The Digital Intermediate replaced the celluloid interpositive, but there were still two separate sets of files.

I have no idea whether this practise is still common or not. The fact that most NLE software nowadays provides extensive effects (see DaVinci Resolve, for example) suggests that it may not be.

Afaik offline editing is still preferably done on lower resolution transcodes simply due to space/speed considerations. 4K video in particular is just too bulky even for modern computers.