stratology
Strat-Talker
What I find to be most believable is that you did indeed acquire the term "chord" from somewhere other than yourself (as well as the "concept" of what it is)
Learning the term 'chord' and understanding the music theory underpinnings of what exactly the term means are two entirely different things.
'Chord' means
- you play 3 or more notes at the same time
- the underlying principle of choosing the notes is stacking 'same name' intervals - stacking 3rds is extremely common, you can also stack 2nds (-> clusters) or 4ths. Quartal voicings are quite popular among jazz players. I quite like the sound of stacked 5ths, which I think of as '1-2-5' voicings.
Lots of guitarists play 'chords', but are either completely unaware of the underlying music theory principles, or have some idea, without full, comprehensive understanding.
Many beginning players learn how to play something like a 1st position C cowboy chord, or 1st position F barre chord, and don't even realise that each one has only 3 different notes, which are duplicated to taste (like 3 F notes, 2 C notes, in the 1st position F barre chord..).
So you can learn something by rote, but you may or may not choose to learn the theory of what you just did there afterwards.
Learning by imitating something by ear, by imitating something you see (observe or read), or by learning how it's constructed are different ways of learning.