Why TERM environment valuable is set to cygwin on octave for windows

[Tatsuro MATSUOKA]

I found that TERM environment valuable is set to cygwin
in octave.bat and octave.vbs (startup script file).

I suspect that 
TERM is referred in octave and 
some scripts require TERM value is cygwin.


Am I right?
This is just from a curiosity.

Tatsuro