Sorry but that is piss poor phraseology. If you give me maintain 2500 when I'm at 3500 for brevity, it'll take an extra 30 seconds to confirm what you meant when you could have said descend and everyone would be on the same page.
Honestly if you give me something like that, I assume you've lost your SA and now don't trust much of anything from you until I feel like you've got a handle on things again.