The Complete Guide to Technology Etymology: Where Internet and Computing Words Really Come From

Why Technology Vocabulary Has Two Very Different Sources

The history of technology vocabulary divides cleanly around 1990. Before the internet, technology was named by engineers and scientists steeped in classical education — they coined terms from Latin and Greek roots using the same system as medicine and science. “Telephone” (Greek “tele,” far + “phone,” voice), “television” (Greek “tele” + Latin “visio,” sight), “automobile” (Greek “autos,” self + Latin “mobilis,” movable), “electricity” (Greek “elektron,” amber), “computer” (Latin “computare,” to reckon together). These follow the classical naming convention exactly.

After 1990, technology was named in Silicon Valley by a generation that knew English, not Latin. They coined words differently: by compounding native English words (smartphone, laptop, touchscreen), by shortening (app from application, lab from laboratory, blog from web log, pic from picture), by verbing nouns (to google, to tweet, to text, to friend, to ghost), and by borrowing from pop culture and slang (viral, streaming, trolling, phishing, spam). The result is a technology vocabulary with two completely different etymological layers.

The Classical Layer: Computing and Science Terms

Computer. Latin “computare” = com- (together) + putare (to reckon, to think, to prune — interesting range of meanings). Until the 1940s, a “computer” was a person whose job was to perform calculations. Electronic computers took the name from the human job they were designed to replace. The first electronic computers were built in the 1940s; the word shifted to mean the machine rather than the person by the 1950s. “Computation” and “compute” follow the same root.

Digital. Latin “digitus” means finger or toe — the original counting tools. “Digital” first meant “relating to a finger” (17th century), then came to mean “represented by discrete numerical digits” (as opposed to analog), and finally came to mean “using electronic binary technology” in the 20th century. When we talk about “the digital age,” we are using a word that connects our era to the most ancient form of counting: fingers.

Algorithm. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a 9th-century Persian mathematician working in Baghdad. He wrote a treatise on algebraic methods (the title contained “al-jabr” = algebra) and a book on Hindu-Arabic numerals. When his books were translated into Latin in the 12th century, his name was Latinised as “Algoritmi.” The procedures described in his books were called “algoritmi” after him — and the word became “algorithm,” meaning any systematic step-by-step procedure. A mathematician’s name from 9th-century Baghdad became the defining term of the digital age.

Data. Latin “datum” (something given), plural “data.” In Latin, data are facts that are “given” or assumed as the starting points for reasoning. The word entered English scientific usage in the 17th century. “Database” combined it with the native English “base.” The phrase “big data” uses the Latin plural with a Germanic adjective — entirely natural in English, which mixes classical and Germanic elements effortlessly.

The Internet Age: Vernacular Coinages

The vocabulary of the internet era is strikingly different from everything that came before. “Blog” (2003, from “web log”) — the first element is pure English; the “log” ultimately goes back to the literal wooden log thrown overboard to measure a ship’s speed, then the nautical log-book. “Podcast” (2004) = iPod (a trade name, itself a reference to the egg-shaped pods of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey) + broadcast. “Selfie” (2002, popularised by Instagram) = self + the diminutive suffix -ie/-y, common in Australian slang. “App” (2008, popularised by the Apple App Store) = simple truncation of “application.”

The verbing of technology nouns is particularly striking: “to google” (to search online), “to tweet” (to post on Twitter), “to text” (to send a text message), “to unfriend” (to remove from a social network), “to ghost” (to cut off contact without explanation). These are native English verbs formed from technology brand names or digital concepts — a pattern unprecedented in the history of vocabulary creation. Shakespeare verbed nouns; the internet generation verbed platforms.

False Friends in Technology

“Virus” in biology (from Latin “virus,” poison, slime) and “virus” in computing (malicious code) share a root but not a history — the computing term was coined by analogy in 1984. “Memory” in computing (storage capacity) and “memory” in psychology (recollection) both descend from Latin “memoria” but refer to completely different functions. “Protocol” in diplomacy (rules governing formal behaviour, from Greek “protokollon,” first page glued to a document) and “protocol” in computing (a set of rules for data transmission) share a root and a metaphorical connection — both are agreed rules governing how parties communicate — but the computing sense is a deliberate metaphorical extension, not an accident.