Don’t you update the DOM to render the pieces as they’re moved?

A static website is one that doesn’t have an associated backend API server, just serves as one or more self contained file assets.

The files you serve to the browser are static, not the contents of the page itself

Updating the dom can happen with only individual assets, so it’s a static site

when someone describes a static site/app they generally mean there is no backend. not that the frontend is a static image

for example you can service static sites from S3 that have HTML/CSS/JS but no API or DB