computer

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an electronic machine that stores and processes information and runs programs

   I use my computer to write emails and play games.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Computer, based on Latin computare, “to calculate,” first meant a person who performed calculations in the 17th century, particularly someone employed to do so in an observatory or in surveying. In the late 19th century the word was applied to a mechanical calculating machine, and its modern sense dates from the 1940s.

From compute + -er. Doublet of cantore, counter, and kontor. First sense first appears c. 1613 in the works of the poet Richard Brathwait. Second sense first appears c. 1897 in the magazine Engineering.

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