What does "のこと" mean in the following sentence?

Question

I am in the process of reading through the Japanese Wikipedia article titled "事件". The beginning of the article lists two definitions for "事件". The sentence that I am confused over is as follows.

法令用語としては、事柄・案件のこと。

English: As a legal term, it means a matter or a case.

Does the term "のこと" actually translate to "it means…" in this context? Or, to put this in another way, is the term "のこと" equivalent to "~という意味だ" or "~ということである" in Japanese?

Here is the article in question: https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6

I hope someone can explain this to me.

Answer 1

Yes, this ～のこと means ～のことを表す or ～のことである. In other words, it's a shortened way of saying "It means ～". The article says that the word 事件 usually refers to things like accidents, troubles and criminal cases, but in legal terms, it neutrally refers to cases/issues in general.