Modem

How to spell modem

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce modem

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does modem mean?

1. nounA device that connects a computer or network to the internet by converting digital data for transmission over a line and back again.

Modem in a sentence

• The engineer replaced the faulty modem before the broadband would work.

• A flashing light on the modem usually means the connection has dropped.

Where does modem come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Modem is a twentieth-century blend word, formed by stitching together the first part of 'modulator' and the first part of 'demodulator', the two functions the device performs. To modulate is to impose a signal onto a carrier wave, from the Latin modulari, meaning 'to measure' or 'to regulate', itself from modus, 'measure' or 'manner'; to demodulate is simply to reverse that process and recover the original signal. The term was coined in the United States around the late 1950s by engineers working on telephone-line data transmission, who needed a single label for hardware that translated digital data into sounds and back again. As home computing and the internet spread in the 1980s and 1990s the word leapt from technical manuals into ordinary speech. The spelling is unusual because it is a true acronym-like fusion, so it has no separate root or suffix to lean on, just the two clipped halves jammed together.

How the word is built

• mo(dulator)
• dem(odulator) (a blend; the device that modulates and demodulates signals)