"Propagate" just means "spread". Your latest record certainly does "propagate" in that it displaces the previous version of the record in resolvers' caches.
People use it in the context of "I've made the change now the change has to be pushed out to everyone" but that's not true. Everyone else has to pull the change.
It's the idea that it spreads out slowly from the centre to the far reaches that annoys me - which is what most people seem to be suggesting when they refer to "DNS Propagating".
It's not one big push, it's millions of tiny pulls.
