internet
n.n. a global system that connects computers and lets people share information, shop, and communicate online.
n. a worldwide system of interconnected computer networks enabling data exchange and communication. General-service, informal, and sometimes humorous usage.
I use the internet to check my email and watch videos.
During the pandemic, many people relied on the internet for work, school, and socializing.
The internet has transformed how society functions, acting as both a tool for global collaboration and a source of unprecedented challenges in privacy and misinformation.
internet began life as the conventional capitalised Internet. Once the network stopped being one thing and turned into the condition of being online, the lower-case variant emerged.
The verb is a back-formation from that noun; no new morphology, simply the customary English habit of turning the name of a thing into the act of using it.
From the Latin prefix inter-, ‘among, between’, joined to the English verb net, itself a clipped form of ‘network’. The compound was first assembled in the 1970s by the architects of what was then the ARPAN or ARPANET; when the system between networks became the network, the word retained its parts but dropped the capital letters.