Data

How to spell data

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce data

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does data mean?

1. nounFacts, figures, or information gathered together for reference or analysis.

Data in a sentence

• The survey data showed a sharp drop in customer satisfaction.

• The app stores your personal data on a secure server.

Where does data come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Data comes straight from Latin, where it is the plural of datum, meaning 'a thing given'. Datum itself is the neuter past participle of the verb dare, which simply meant 'to give', so the literal sense was 'the things that have been given'. The word arrived in English in the 1600s through mathematics and philosophy, where 'data' meant the facts or quantities granted at the start of a problem, the givens you reason from. Over the twentieth century, and especially with the rise of computing, it broadened to mean any collection of facts, figures, or records used for analysis. Because it began life as a Latin plural, careful writers long treated it as plural ('the data are clear'), though in everyday and technical English it is now very often used as a singular mass noun ('the data is clear'). The same dare root survives in everyday relatives such as 'date' and 'donate'.

How the word is built

• data (Latin plural of datum: 'a thing given')