computing
Americannoun
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the use of a computer to process data or perform calculations.
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the act of calculating or reckoning.
noun
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the activity of using computers and writing programs for them
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the study of computers and their implications
adjective
Etymology
Origin of computing
Explanation
Computing is the act of calculating something––adding it up, multiplying it, or doing more complex math functions to it. Computers are named for this process, because they can compute faster than most people. The verb compute comes from a Latin word for pruning. You can think of it like cleaning up piles of data to get a clear result. If you run a shop and have lots of figures, for items sold and returned, and money paid for salaries and overhead, then you'll have to do some computing to know how much money you actually earned that day. It's also a type of engineering.
Vocabulary lists containing computing
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
From Washington to London, the world’s major economic powers are deploying capital to ensure the quantum computing industry expands within their own borders.
From Barron's • Jun. 12, 2026
The AI business is in need of major investments to develop the huge orbital data-center network that aims to provide computing resources SpaceX could use itself and sell to other AI companies.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 12, 2026
“If the economics change, Nvidia can join the frontier and become one of the world’s largest cloud computing companies much faster than people think.”
From MarketWatch • Jun. 12, 2026
The merged company’s Grok large language model is seen as lagging competitors, but SpaceX has built two large terrestrial data centers, which are leasing computing power to rivals Anthropic and Google.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 12, 2026
From the beginning of the computing pools, the women easily hurdled the engineers’ expectations, raising the bar as they did it.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
