There are several seemly unconditional uses of integral promotion in the current working draft. Presumably all of them mean that "performs the integral promotion and uses the result if possible, otherwise, uses the original operand or type" (promotion-or-identity).

[expr.arith.conv]/(1.5)

Otherwise, the integral promotions ([conv.prom]) shall be performed on both operands. Then the following rules shall be applied to the promoted operands:

[expr.unary.op]/7

The operand of the unary + operator shall have arithmetic, unscoped enumeration, or pointer type and the result is the value of the argument. Integral promotion is performed on integral or enumeration operands. The type of the result is the type of the promoted operand.

[expr.unary.op]/8

The operand of the unary - operator shall have arithmetic or unscoped enumeration type and the result is the negative of its operand. Integral promotion is performed on integral or enumeration operands. The negative of an unsigned quantity is computed by subtracting its value from 2ⁿ, where n is the number of bits in the promoted operand. The type of the result is the type of the promoted operand.

[expr.unary.op]/10

The operand of ~ shall have integral or unscoped enumeration type; the result is the ones’ complement of its operand. Integral promotions are performed. The type of the result is the type of the promoted operand. ...

[expr.shift]/1

... The operands shall be of integral or unscoped enumeration type and integral promotions are performed. The type of the result is that of the promoted left operand. The behavior is undefined if the right operand is negative, or greater than or equal to the width of the promoted left operand.

[over.ics.rank]/(4.2)

A conversion that promotes an enumeration whose underlying type is fixed to its underlying type is better than one that promotes to the promoted underlying type, if the two are different.

[over.built]/2

In this subclause, the term promoted integral type is used to refer to those cv-unqualified integral types which are preserved by integral promotion ([conv.prom]) (including e.g. int and long but excluding e.g. char).

I think we can disambiguate [over.ics.rank]/(4.2) and [over.built]/2 like below:

A If the underlying type of an enumeration is fixed and subject to integral promotions, a conversion that promotes an the enumeration whose underlying type is fixed to its underlying type is better than one that promotes to the promoted underlying type , if the two are different.

In this subclause, the term promoted integral type is used to refer to those cv-unqualified integral types which are preserved by not subject to integral promotion ([conv.prom]) (including e.g. int and long but excluding e.g. char).

For the rest, my favorite way is to establish a new term to express the promotion-or-identity semantics.

I agree that we should just define "promoted operand" as "operand with integral promotions applied, if any".

Maybe, we should also clarify promoted integral type in a similar manner.

promoted integral type is used to refer to those cv-unqualified integral types that result from applying integral promotions(if any).

This could interpret why int or long is the promoted integral type but char is not since the former doesn't need to undergo promotion and the latter always be int after promotion.