Gif

How to spell gif

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gif

What does gif mean?

1. nounA digital image file format, commonly used for short, silently looping animations shared online.
2. verbTo turn a video clip or moment into a short looping animated image.

Gif in a sentence

• noun

  She replied to the group chat with a funny gif instead of words.

• verb

  Fans like to gif the best moments from each new episode.

• noun

  The designer saved the logo animation as a gif for the website.

• verb

  He decided to gif the goal so he could post it online.

Where does gif come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word began life as an acronym, GIF, standing for Graphics Interchange Format, a way of storing and sharing images that compresses them without losing detail. It was coined in 1987 by the American online service CompuServe, and the format's creator, Steve Wilhite, designed it so that small animated and still pictures could travel quickly across the slow networks of the day. The term passed into everyday speech as the lowercase word 'gif' once short looping animations became a staple of internet messaging and social media. There has been a famously stubborn disagreement over how to say it, with the inventor insisting on a soft 'j' sound, like the peanut butter brand Jif, while many speakers use a hard 'g' as in 'gift'. The spelling, happily, stays the same whichever camp you join, which makes the single 'f' the only thing worth remembering.

How the word is built

• g (graphics)
• i (interchange)
• f (format), an acronym written as one word