Reboot

How to spell reboot

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce reboot

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reboot mean?

1. verbTo shut down and start a computer or device again so it reloads its operating system.
2. nounA fresh restart of something, especially a new version of a film or series that begins the story again.

Reboot in a sentence

• verb

  The technician advised her to reboot the laptop before installing the update.

• noun

  The studio announced a complete reboot of the superhero franchise.

• verb

  If the screen freezes, simply reboot the router and wait a minute.

• noun

  After the system crash, a quick reboot cleared the error.

Where does reboot come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern computing word built from the prefix re-, meaning 'again', and 'boot', which is itself a shortening of 'bootstrap'. The bootstrap idea comes from the old phrase about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, describing a self-starting process that needs no outside help; engineers borrowed it in the mid twentieth century to describe how a computer loads a small startup program that in turn loads the full operating system. By the 1970s 'boot' had become standard jargon for starting a machine, and 'reboot' naturally followed for starting it over. The spelling is regular and phonetic, so the only real trap is the doubled letters where the prefix meets the root: re plus boot gives a single oo, never three. From the 2000s the word spread beyond technology into entertainment, where a reboot means relaunching a film or television series with a fresh start.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• boot (short for bootstrap, the process by which a computer loads its operating system)