Login

How to spell login

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce login

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does login mean?

1. nounA user name and password used to access a computer system, or the act of gaining such access.
2. adjectiveRelating to the screen or process by which a user signs in to a system.

Login in a sentence

• noun

  The help desk reset her login after three failed attempts.

• adjective

  The login page would not load on the old browser.

• noun

  Each employee receives a unique login on their first day.

• adjective

  A new login button appeared at the top of the dashboard.

Where does login come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern compound, built from the everyday verb phrase 'to log in', which itself grew out of the much older noun 'log'. That older 'log' originally meant a heavy block of wood, and from the 1500s sailors trailed a wooden 'log' on a line behind a ship to measure its speed, recording the results in a 'log-book'. By extension 'log' came to mean any official running record, so 'to log' something meant to write it into that record. When computers needed users to identify themselves and have their activity recorded, programmers in the mid twentieth century borrowed this sense, and 'log in' described entering the system. The two-word phrasal verb then condensed into the single noun and adjective 'login' for the credentials or the act of signing on, and the spelling trap is precisely that fusion: the verb stays two words ('log in') while the noun closes up to one ('login').

How the word is built

• log (record/sign-in, from ship's log)
• in (entry particle); fused into a single noun/adjective