ONLINE Definition & Meaning

On-line is the older variation of these two sweepstakes casino words that is quickly falling out of common use. Here are a few examples of the word’s use as an adjective, Plus, I will show you a helpful memory tool that will allow you to choose on-line or online in your own writing. I will use each of these words in at least one example sentence, so you can see them in context. In this post, I will compare on-line vs online.

Since at least 1950, in computing, the terms on-line and off-line have been used to refer to whether machines, including computers and peripheral devices, are connected or not. The term “offline” is sometimes used interchangeably with the acronym “IRL”, meaning “in real life”, as well as about office meetings in person wherein a formal, high-concentration meeting may have matters taken “offline” to a more relaxed moment away from the “online” high-stress meeting. Today, “online” most commonly describes a device that is connected to the internet. While the adjective officially describes a connection to any computer network, it’s almost always used these days to mean “on the Internet.” The word online has been around since 1950.

Media Literacy – Introductory

Slater asserts that there are legal and regulatory pressures to reduce the distinction between online and offline, with a “general tendency to assimilate online to offline and erase the distinction,” stressing, however, that this does not mean that online relationships are being reduced to pre-existing offline relationships. This distinction between online and offline is sometimes inverted, with online concepts being used to define and to explain offline activities, rather than (as per the conventions of the desktop metaphor with its desktops, trash cans, folders, and so forth) the other way around. To support his argument that the distinctions in relationships are more complex than a simple dichotomy of online versus offline, he observes that some people draw no distinction between an online relationship, such as indulging in cybersex, and an offline relationship, such as being pen pals. The distinction between online and offline is conventionally seen as the distinction between computer-mediated communication and face-to-face communication (e.g., face time), respectively. Online and offline distinctions have been generalised from computing and telecommunication into the field of human interpersonal relationships. In the same context, the person’s availability is termed as online and non-availability is termed as offline.

Pairs of Commonly Confused Words

The chart below, which graphs online vs. on-line over time, illustrates this trend. On-line was originally more popular, but online has since surpassed it in total usage. It’s slightly newer, although both versions originated in the late 20th century with the advent of widespread personal computing. Online is the now-standard spelling of the word.

• In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed as “on line” or “on the line”) could refer to any piece of equipment or functional unit that is connected to a larger system.
• A similar meaning is also given by the prefixes cyber and e, as in words cyberspace, cybercrime, email, and e-commerce.
• It’s slightly newer, although both versions originated in the late 20th century with the advent of widespread personal computing.
• On-line was originally more popular, but online has since surpassed it in total usage.

Popular in Wordplay

If you cannot access websites or check your email from your laptop, it may be offline. The term applies to various electronics, including computers, smartphones, smart TVs, gaming consoles, and IoT devices. When you’re online, you are using a computer or other device that’s connected to the Internet. And we don’t just host online games, we play them too. Since online basically means connected, you can remember that online is the better version.

In the context of file systems, online and offline are synonymous with mounted and not mounted. With the growing communication tools and media, the words offline and online are used very frequently. In Internet Explorer version 6, the level of direct and indirect links, the maximum amount of local disc space allowed to be consumed, and the schedule on which local copies are checked to see whether they are up-to-date, are configurable for each individual Favourites entry. When the sync master commences playback, the online device automatically synchronizes itself to the master and commences playing from the same point in the recording.

For communities that lack adequate Internet connectivity—such as developing countries, rural areas, and prisons—offline information stores such as WiderNet’s eGranary Digital Library (a collection of approximately thirty million educational resources from more than two thousand web sites and hundreds of CD-ROMs) provide offline access to information. Internet Explorer will download local copies of both the marked page and, optionally, all of the pages that it links to. This can be useful when the computer is offline and connection to the Internet is impossible or undesirable. A third example of a common use of these concepts is a web browser that can be instructed to be in either online or offline states. A device that is offline uses no external clock reference and relies upon its own internal clock. A tape recorder, digital audio editor, or other device that is online is one whose clock is under the control of the clock of a synchronization master device.