Just to confirm, you don’t think of jewel wasps, spider wasps, sand wasps, and flower wasps as wasps, since they’re not part of the Vespidae, correct?

Negative, those are all considered wasps alongside Vespidae. I said “that logic doesn’t check out” because what you had essentially said in that previous reply was “if wasp==wasp and wasp==wasp, then so are ants and bees”, which is… well… false.

It also erases the very wasp-like nature of ant ancestors

That ancestry is pretty much expressed in Formicidae belonging to the Aculeata infraorder, though I do agree that putting them under some sort of vespid superfamily would be even more fitting, since ants pretty much did evolve from wasps.

If that’s a wasp and a yellow-jacket is a wasp, then so are ants and bees,

That logic doesn’t check out, given Sapygidae is a family of sapygid wasps belonging to the Aculeata infraorder.

Aculeata is named after its defining feature, which is the modification of the ovipositor into a stinger. This trait doesn’t strictly constitute a wasp, which is why they have their own families (Vespidae, Sapygidae, Pompilidae, Myrmosidae, basically all of the Chrysidoidea superfamily, etc.).

All wasps are aculeate, but not all aculeates are wasps.

Yup! Was about to type out a similar reply. To further clarify:

Hymenoptera - order of Insecta - ants, bees, wasps, hornets
Aculeata - infraorder of Hymenoptera - bees, wasps, hornets
Apidae - family of Aculeata - bees (also bumblebees)
Vespidae - family of Aculeata - wasps, hornets Formicidae - family of Hymenoptera - ants

edit20260227: forgot ants belong to aculeata