floppy disk
compound.compound. a small, square plastic object used in the past to store computer information. You cannot store much on them compared to modern USB drives.
compound. a flexible, magnetic storage medium encased in a square plastic shell, widely used from the 1970s to the late 1990s. Now largely obsolete, though the icon remains the universal symbol for saving data.
I found an old floppy disk in my desk drawer.
Before high-speed internet and cloud storage, students had to carry a floppy disk to the computer lab to print their essays.
While the physical floppy disk has vanished from modern hardware, its legacy persists in software interfaces where a 3.5-inch diskette icon still represents the 'save' command for millions of users.
A compound of the adjective floppy and the noun disk. The name refers to the flexible nature of the magnetic storage medium used in the original eight-inch format, which lacked the rigid casing of later iterations.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Often shortened to 'floppy' in informal technical contexts.
Last updated July 22, 2026