Telecommunication

How to spell telecommunication

17 letters · 7 syllables

How to pronounce telecommunication

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does telecommunication mean?

1. nounThe transmission of information such as voice, data, or images over distances by electronic means like phone, radio, or internet.

Telecommunication in a sentence

• The company invested heavily in telecommunication to connect its remote offices.

• Advances in telecommunication have made video calls across continents routine.

Where does telecommunication come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is a modern compound that fuses a Greek prefix with a Latin root. The first part, tele-, comes from the Greek word for 'far off' or 'at a distance', the same element that gives us telephone, telegraph, and television. The second part traces back to the Latin verb communicare, meaning 'to share' or 'to make common', which itself was built on communis, literally 'shared by all' or 'common'. The word was coined in the early twentieth century, modelled on the French telecommunication, to name the technology of sharing information across long distances by electrical or radio signal. Knowing that the heart of the word is communicate is the best guard against the common spelling slip of dropping one of the doubled letters or the unstressed vowels in the long middle stretch.

How the word is built

• tele- (Greek: far, distant)
• commun- (from Latin communis: common, shared)
• -ic
• -ation (noun suffix)