the fact is....heterozygous ONLY means that the two alleles present are not the same. It doesn't matter what the two alleles are, as long as they're different. It doesn't matter if one is simple recessive and the other is dominant, or if it's more complex than that. "hetero-" means different and "homo-" means the same (think heterosexual, homogenized, homophone, etc...)

HOWEVER..."het" (not "heterozygous") in the snake community pretty much does mean "normal with 1 allele for a recessive trait" because there's generally a name already for the heterozygous co-doms, and there's no distinction for the heterozygous vs. homozygous forms of the dominant traits. I don't think it's that bad to tell someone that hets are normal that carry a gene for a recessive trait. Especially if you then link them to some place to learn more of the details.