Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having no wires.
- adjective Of or relating to communication by transmitting electromagnetic signals through the air.
- adjective Chiefly British Of or relating to radio or communication by radiotelegraphy or radiotelephony.
- noun A radio telegraph or radiotelephone system.
- noun A message transmitted by wireless telegraph or telephone.
- noun Chiefly British Radio.
- transitive & intransitive verb To communicate with or send communications by wireless.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Being or done without a wire; not requiring a wire for its operation: as, wireless telegraphy.
- noun Wireless telegraphy: as, a message by wireless.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Short for
wireless telegraphy ,wireless telephony , etc.. - adjective (Elec.) Having no wire
- adjective (Elec.) any system of telegraphy employing no connecting wire or wires between the transmitting and receiving stations.
- adjective an apparatus or contrivance for wireless telephony.
- adjective telephony without wires, usually employing electric waves of high frequency emitted from an oscillator or generator, as in wireless telegraphy. A telephone transmitter causes fluctuations in these waves, it being the fluctuations only which affect the receiver.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Not having any
wires . - adjective Of or relating to communication without a wired connection, such as by radio waves.
- noun uncountable The medium of radio communication.
- noun dated A
radio set. - noun uncountable Wireless
connectivity to a computernetwork . - verb To send a
message by wireless (byradio )
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective having no wires
- noun transmission by radio waves
- noun a communication system based on broadcasting electromagnetic waves
- noun an electronic receiver that detects and demodulates and amplifies transmitted signals
- noun medium for communication
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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If you have been on wireless as long as I have been you will see that major disruption in wireless is going to happen soon.
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This report would not be complete without touching on the fact that the term wireless HD is used by nearly all manufacturers of any wireless video product.
HDTV Magazine 2010
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United States wireless companies tend to use the term wireless to refer to a wide range of services while the cell phone itself is called a mobile phone, mobile,
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008
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United States wireless companies tend to use the term wireless to refer to a wide range of services while the cell phone itself is called a mobile phone, mobile,
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008
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But while most of these shorthand terms have agreed-upon meanings, that's not the case with "4G," the term wireless carriers use for a variety of upgraded services.
4G fog thickens as AT&T upgrades vocabulary Rob Pegoraro 2011
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Most people listened to what they call the wireless, the radio.
The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana 2000
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You see every warship is equipped with what they call a wireless apparatus.
The Beasts of Tarzan 1914
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You see every warship is equipped with what they call a wireless apparatus.
Beasts of Tarzan Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912
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Mobile wireless is hot, with about 80% of the adults under 30 being wired into wireless.
Web Teacher › Pew Research Looks at Social Media and Young Adults 2010
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"I've always been a believer in wireless," Falcone said in his office 30 stories above Park Avenue in New York.
A Harbinger of wireless risks to come Anthony Effinger 2010
colleen commented on the word wireless
"To send or communicate by wireless telegraphy; also, to send a wireless message to (a person). Colloq."
December 14, 2006
oroboros commented on the word wireless
Sounds like the letters Y R L S.
May 17, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word wireless
"Messages from Nome to the states went over three handlings: radio, telegraph, and submarine cable. The U.S. Signal Corps made several attempts to link Nome via a submarine cable across Norton Sound to St. Michael, but the constant shifting of the ice across the seabed floor repeatedly carried the cable out to sea. With no other option available, the Corps turned to the relatively new technology of 'wireless telegraphy'; it built 200-foot towers at each end of Norton Sound, 133 miles apart, and successfully made Nome a part of the system. The radio link, however, was not without its own temporary problems. A blizzard in 1904 tore the roof off the station on the Nome side, filling the room up with snow and killing the fire in the potbelly stove that kept the operators warm. In a matter of seconds the temperature inside the station dropped to nearly 70 below and the water in the 6-horsepower gasoline engine that ran the generator froze, cracking the cylinder."
--Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic (NY and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), 19n
January 24, 2017