English dictionary, thesaurus, translations & etymology

Etymology — The Origins of English Words

Where do words come from? Trace the origin and history of any English word, from its Latin, Greek or Old English roots through to its modern meaning. Every etymology is sourced.

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A compound of hot, in the figurative sense of intense or active, and spot, a place. The wireless sense extends the older general meaning of an area of concentrated activity.

A shortening of fifth generation, continuing the numbering used for earlier mobile network standards such as 3G and 4G.

From ether, the substance once thought to fill space and carry light waves, plus the suffix -net for network.

An initialism of near-field communication, describing the very short range over which the signal operates.

A brand name adopted by the industry group that certifies compatible wireless equipment. It is a coined trade name rather than an abbreviation, though it plays on the older term hi-fi.

An initialism of NVM Express, itself from non-volatile memory, with express marking the interface's high speed.

From thermal, relating to heat, plus paste.

From over- plus clock, referring to the clock speed at which a chip is rated to run.

From cache, a hiding place, from French cacher, to hide, combined with memory.

A blend of firm and software, coined on the model of hardware and software to name code that sits between the two.

An acronym of basic input/output system.

An initialism of hard disk drive.

An initialism of solid-state drive, where solid-state refers to having no moving parts.

An initialism of graphics processing unit.

An initialism of central processing unit.

Named by John Gruber in 2004 as a play on markup, the general term for adding formatting instructions to plain text.

A recursive acronym for YAML Ain't Markup Language; it originally stood for Yet Another Markup Language.

A shortening of disk image.

An initialism of Android Package.

A shortening of executable.

From ppt, the older extension for a Microsoft PowerPoint file, plus x for XML, the text-based system used to store the file's contents.

From xls, the older extension for a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, plus x for XML, the text-based system used to store the file's contents.

From doc, short for document, plus x for XML, the text-based system used to store the file's contents.

An initialism of Rich Text Format.