The point being made is that 'merge request' is a better description than 'pull request' for the same functionality, where one requests that a repo pull from your fork's branch and merge it's commits.
The mechanism is a pull, followed by a merge. But what's interesting about the transaction is that your tree is merged with the upstream tree; the pull is just an implementation detail. You would be just as happy if the merge happened somehow that didn't involve a pull, but you wouldn't be very happy if there were a pull but no merge.
