Ethernet

How to spell ethernet

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ethernet

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ethernet mean?

1. nounA widely used system for connecting computers and devices on a local network using cables.

Ethernet in a sentence

• The office desktops connect to the server over ethernet rather than wifi.

• He ran a long ethernet cable from the router to the back bedroom.

Where does ethernet come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Ethernet is a coined trademark from the early 1970s, devised in 1973 by Robert Metcalfe and his colleagues at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for a system of wiring computers together on a local network. The first part borrows 'ether', the name nineteenth century physicists gave to the invisible all-pervading medium they believed carried light waves through space; that older word descends through Latin aether from the Greek aither, meaning the bright upper air or the clear sky. The second part is simply 'net', a clipping of 'network'. Metcalfe chose 'ether' as a playful nod to the idea that the cable carried signals between machines much as the luminiferous ether was once imagined to carry light. The spelling trap lives in the middle: it is spelled with the same 'ther' as 'ether', not 'ernet' as the running pronunciation suggests, and there is no 'a' despite the Greek 'aither' ancestor.

How the word is built

• ether (the hypothetical medium once thought to carry light)
• net (short for network)