A nose-down attitude looks like the opposite of a stall. It isn't always. Stalling has nothing to do with where the nose points — it's about the angle between the wing and the air actually flowing past it.
Pitch attitude and angle of attack (AoA) get treated as interchangeable in casual conversation, and most of the time the mix-up is harmless — in ordinary, gentle flight, they move together closely enough that it doesn't matter. But they are measured against completely different references, and in the exact moments that matter most — steep descents, abrupt maneuvering, a wing already close to its limit — they can point in genuinely different directions. Confusing the two isn't just an academic slip. It has been a contributing factor in real accident investigations, which is exactly why some modern flight decks carry a dedicated angle-of-attack indicator, separate from the attitude indicator every pilot already scans.