internet
- 01 A2 Elementary
n.the connection or service that allows you to go online.
n.uncountable reference to internet access or signal connectivity.
Simple“The hotel has free internet in every room.”
In context“We experienced frequent drops in the internet while traveling through the mountainous regions of the north.”
Synonyms - 02 C1 Advanced
n.fake points you 'win' for making a funny or clever post online.
n.a fictitious unit of scoring awarded for outstanding or humorous social media posts.
Simple“That cat video is so cute, you win ten internets.”
In context“He won the internets for the day with his perfectly timed response to the celebrity's controversial tweet.”
- 03 B2 Upper Intermediate
v.to spend time using the internet or searching for things online.
v.to engage in activity on the internet, particularly searching for information or browsing social media.
Simple“I spent the whole afternoon interneting instead of doing my homework.”
In context“She spent several hours interneting to find the best deals on vintage furniture before making a final purchase.”
Usage internet access
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.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.