Broadband

How to spell broadband

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce broadband

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does broadband mean?

1. nounA high-capacity, always-on internet connection that transmits data over a wide range of frequencies.

Broadband in a sentence

• The village finally got fast broadband last spring.

• Our monthly bill covers both broadband and a landline.

Where does broadband come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Broadband is a transparent compound of two old English words: 'broad', from Old English 'brad' meaning wide or extensive, and 'band', a range or strip, which entered English through Old French 'bande' but traces back to a Germanic root for something that ties or bound things together. In the technical sense, a 'band' came to mean a continuous range of frequencies within a spectrum, a usage that took hold in radio and telecommunications during the early twentieth century. 'Broadband' therefore originally described a transmission medium capable of carrying a wide range of frequencies at once, in contrast to narrowband. The word existed in engineering circles for decades before exploding into everyday speech around the late 1990s and early 2000s, when fast always-on internet connections replaced dial-up. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the spelling holds few surprises; the only thing to watch is that it is written as one solid word, not 'broad band'.

How the word is built

• broad (wide)
• band (a range of frequencies)