Laptop

How to spell laptop

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce laptop

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does laptop mean?

1. nounA portable computer with a screen and keyboard that folds together as a single unit.

Laptop in a sentence

• She packed her laptop before the morning flight.

• The battery on his laptop lasts about six hours.

Where does laptop come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern compound formed entirely from two ordinary English words, 'lap' and 'top'. The word 'lap' goes back to the Old English 'laeppa', which originally meant a loose flap or fold of a garment and later came to mean the flat area formed by the thighs when a person sits down. The word 'top', also from Old English 'topp', simply means the highest or upper part of something. The compound was coined in the early 1980s by analogy with 'desktop', describing a portable computer small enough to rest on the user's lap rather than sitting on a desk. Because both parts are plain everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises; the only thing to remember is that it is written as a single closed word with no hyphen.

How the word is built

• lap (the upper legs when seated)
• top (upper surface) = a computer designed to sit on the lap