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data

nounnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈdɑːtə//
  • Australia/[ˈdäːɾə]/
  • //ɖɑʈɑ//

A representation of information in a computer (as symbols, quantities, sound, images or videos) which is stored, processed or transmitted in the form of electrical signals, records on magnetic tape or punched cards, etc.

noun

  1. 1

    Also a form of datumplural of datum

    Holonym: data set

    These data show that the new policy is not working as intended.

    First from these Data, let us obtain the Breadth of the Glass e z

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin data, nominative plural of datum (“that is given”), neuter past participle of dō (“to give”); by surface analysis, dat(um) + -a. Doublet of date.

noun

  1. 1

    A representation of information in a computer (as symbols, quantities, sound, images or videos) which is stored, processed or transmitted in the form of electrical signals, records on magnetic tape or punched cards, etc.

    Data can be sent through email.

  2. 2

    Material recorded and known or assumed as facts and used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation, represented especially in the form of numbers, and usually structured (such as statistics).

    Near-synonyms: dataset, data set, data points

    This data shows that X is correlated with Y.

    With fresh material, taxonomic conclusions are leavened by recognition that the material examined reflects the site it occupied; a herbarium packet gives one only a small fraction of the data desirable for sound conclusions. Herbarium material does not, indeed, allow one to extrapolate safely: what you see is what you get[…]

    Risk is everywhere.[…]For each one there is a frighteningly precise measurement of just how likely it is to jump from the shadows and get you. “The Norm Chronicles”[…]aims to help data-phobes find their way through this blizzard of risks.

  3. 3

    Variant of mobile dataEllipsis of mobile data (“digital information transmitted using the cellular telephone network rather than Wi-Fi”).

    run out of data

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).