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 blend of favourites (in the US spelling favorites) and icon, from the small image originally shown beside a saved bookmark.

An initialism of content management system.

From the phrasal verb plug in, on the image of plugging an extra part into a socket.

A compound of middle and the -ware of software.

A compound of web and hook, in the programming sense of a hook as a place where extra behaviour can be attached.

A compound of end and point.

A compound of back and end, describing the part of a system furthest from the user.

A compound of front and end, describing the part of a system nearest the user.

An initialism of user interface.

An initialism of user experience.

An acronym of software as a service.

An initialism of secure sockets layer.

An initialism of content delivery network.

An initialism of domain name system.

An initialism of extensible markup language, so named because users define their own tags rather than being limited to a fixed set.

Originally an initialism of Personal Home Page Tools; the name was later redefined as the recursive expansion PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

An initialism of structured query language. It grew out of an earlier IBM language called SEQUEL, which is why the pronunciation "see-kwuhl" persists alongside the spelled-out form.

An initialism of JavaScript Object Notation, from the fact that its syntax follows the way objects are written in JavaScript.

An initialism of hypertext transfer protocol secure, formed from HTTP with the addition of S for secure.

An initialism of hypertext transfer protocol. It was devised by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN around 1990 alongside HTML and the first web browser.

An initialism of application programming interface.

An initialism of hypertext markup language. It was devised by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN around 1990 as part of the original World Wide Web.

From Java, the name of an unrelated programming language, plus script. The language was originally released under a different name and renamed to JavaScript for its launch.

An initialism of cascading style sheets, so called because style rules from several sources cascade together, with defined rules of precedence deciding which one applies.