Honestly I don’t even understand the narrow sense in which you could say WINE is not an emulator.
There was supposedly a naming discussion in 1993 which resulted in “WINE is not an emulator”. Maybe this was to remind people that you still needed an x86 processor (WINE is not an x86 emulator), or maybe it was born from the idea that WINE does not emulate Windows—maybe it “provides a compatibility layer” or “reimplements the Windows interfaces”.
The Windows APIs are not so well-specified that a mere reimplementation of them would run so much software as WINE does.
There was supposedly a naming discussion in 1993 which resulted in “WINE is not an emulator”. Maybe this was to remind people that you still needed an x86 processor (WINE is not an x86 emulator), or maybe it was born from the idea that WINE does not emulate Windows—maybe it “provides a compatibility layer” or “reimplements the Windows interfaces”.
The Windows APIs are not so well-specified that a mere reimplementation of them would run so much software as WINE does.