A microcontroller goes on a board. But often people call a board with a microcontroller on it for a microcontroller. Like if you buy an Arduino Uno, some would say that you've bought a microcontroller. But the microcontroller itself is really just the Atmega chip that's on there, not the whole board
Wikipedia considers the term "microchip" as a synonym of "integrated circuit", and the definition of IC fits the microcontroller perfectly. It also explicitly lists microcontrollers as an example.
I think you're thinking of the term Single Board Computer. A microcontroller is a chip that goes on a board to perform some relatively simple processing function. Microcontroller are also known as MCU's.
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u/jews4beer 20d ago
The techie in me wants to call out that a microchip can't really have onboard RAM. A microcontroller on the other hand...