>>> This was ten years ago, and "pending" is still somewhat confusing
>>
>> Do you really see that "pending"? ;-)  We removed it recently in bug#52356.
>
> The test case on the current trunk still says "Pending" -- emacs -Q, C-u
> C-s i s * -> pending.

If no one wants "Pending" anywhere, then this patch removes its
remaining occurrences (bug#52356 removed other two occurrences):