I think...that the difference may be due the American VS British perspectives and terminology...from somewhere way back in the '70s.
It's a glass half-empty/half-full kind of thing.
I personally like to think of it as the cutting out of the low end...rather then "passing through" only the high end... because you're not really just passing the "highs" through...you are in fact passing everything above the low cut point.
So a low-cut filter makes more sense...but I've got lots of gear that has both terminologies...so these days I just hit the switch up or down, I don't really think about the meaning anymore.
Well, I think band-pass can mean something different than a basic "filter". I don't think the MIC front end needs to stray beyond filter terminology. I think that should be a "cut", and not a curve. So, already, its not the same : )
I think much of the terminology for filters started many years ago in the RF industry?
Audio men don't for instance, speak of "band stop" filters but the RF crowd do. However, whatever you call a filter you haven't really described it until you give the turnover frequency, bandwidth and rate.