Assuming the definition of model is about right, MBSE simply creates a model of some kind as the specification. What I find fascinating is that the legacy concept of a specification (see, for example, MIL-STD-490) actually meets that description1. This notion is, apparently, lost on the people who have seized on the MBSE buzzword.
Most modern practitioners take “MBSE” to be synonymous with the usage of the System Modeling Language (SysML).
Footnotes- A properly written specification is simply a data model establishing a bounded region in a requirement space…IFF the requirement topics constitute a proper basis.[↩]