Why Benbow is a steam battleship, not a pre-dreadnought

Should ships such as HMS Benbow be called pre-dreadnoughts?

Steam battleship suits Benbow, while later period-specific labels avoid defining ships by HMS Dreadnought, which came afterward.

A viewer praises the appearance of late Victorian warships as purposeful ships rather than floating blocks of armor. Benbow is described as a steam battleship, while the Royal Sovereign class belongs to a later period-specific category. Dreadnought is the next step in that sequence instead of the reference point for everything before it. Calling every earlier ship a pre-dreadnought defines vessels by a successor that did not yet exist. Period-sensitive terminology preserves changes within late nineteenth-century battleship development.