Tech

How to spell tech

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tech

What does tech mean?

1. nounTechnology, especially the electronics, computing, and software industry or its products.
2. nounA technician or technical specialist, often one who repairs or maintains equipment.

Tech in a sentence

• The city has become a hub for tech startups and venture capital.

• The IT tech reset her password and reinstalled the software.

• She left her old job to work in tech after finishing the coding course.

• A lab tech prepared the samples before the experiment began.

Where does tech come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is a modern clipped form of either 'technology' or 'technical', both of which trace back to the ancient Greek tekhne, meaning 'art, skill, or craft'. In classical Greek tekhne covered the practical know-how of an artisan or craftsman, anything from carpentry to medicine, and it sits at the root of a whole family of English words including 'technique', 'technician', and 'architect'. The longer forms entered English through Latin and learned coinage, with 'technology' appearing in the 1600s to mean a systematic treatment of an art. The short colloquial 'tech' took off in the twentieth century, first in college slang for technical institutes and later, from the late 1900s, as a breezy catch-all for the electronics and computing industry. Because it is simply the first syllable lopped off, the spelling keeps the Greek 'ch' that originally stood for the letter chi, which is exactly why it ends in 'ch' rather than a plain 'k'.

How the word is built

• clipping of 'technology' or 'technical' (from Greek tekhne: art, skill, craft)